Attack on Bahāwalpur.
Bhatti Invasion of Bīkaner.
Attack on Jodhpur.
With this system of terror, his increasing superstition, and diminished attention to public duties, the country is annually deteriorating in population and wealth; and as if they had not misery enough within, they have not had a single good season for years.[[41]] Owing to the disobedience of the northern chiefs, and the continual incursions of the Rahats, or ‘Bhatti robbers,’ who sweep the land of cattle, and often cut and carry off entire crops, the peasant Jat, the ancient lord of the soil, is often left to the alternative of starvation or emigration. Many have consequently sought shelter in the British frontier territories, in Hansi and Hariana, where they are kindly received. Since the English have occupied Sirsa and the lands belonging to the Bhatti Bahadur Khan, the misfortunes of the cultivators of the northern parts of Bikaner have been doubled by the inroads of a band left without resource. In some parts, the Jats combine to protect themselves against these inroads: every hamlet has its post of defence, a tower of earth, on which is perched a watchman and kettledrum, to beat the alarm, which is taken up from village to village, and when an enemy is discovered, all are in arms to defend their property. The unfortunate Jat is obliged to plough his fields under the load of shield and sang, or heavy iron lance; so that, at no distant period, the whole of this region must become as desolate as the tracts once possessed by the Johyas.[[42]]
Such, at the end of three hundred and twenty-three years, is the change which a Rajput usurper has effected in the once comparatively populous communities of the Jats. From the founder, Bika, to the present tyrannical governor, there have been only eleven descents though thirteen reigns, giving an average of thirty years for the one, and twenty-five for the other: a fact which speaks forcibly for the general morality of the descendants of Bika.
Bīdāvati.
We do the sons of Bida no injustice when we style them a community of plunderers. Like the sons of Esau, “their hand is against every man”: and they are too powerful to fear retaliation. In former times they used to unite with the Larkhanis [196], another horde of robbers, and carry their raids into the most populous parts of Jaipur. In these habits, however, they only partake of the character common to all who inhabit desert regions. What nature has denied them, they wrest from those to whom she has been more bountiful. But it is to the absence of good government more than to natural sterility that we must attribute the moral obliquity of the Rajaputras, ‘the offspring of regality,’ spread over these extensive regions, who little discriminate between meum and tuum, in all that refers to their neighbours.
[1]. [At present greatest length about 320 miles, greatest breadth 170 miles.]
[2]. [In 1911 the population was 2,057,553.]