[31]. We are not told of what race (kula) was the Lodra Rajput; in all probability it was Pramara, or Puar, which at one time occupied the whole desert of India. Lodorva, as will be seen, became the capital of the Bhattis, until the founding of their last and present capital, Jaisalmer; it boasts a high antiquity, though now a ruin, occupied by a few families of shepherds. Many towns throughout the desert were formerly of celebrity, but are now desolate, through the conjoined causes of perpetual warfare and the shifting sands. I obtained a copper-plate inscription of the tenth century from Lodorva, of the period of Bijairaj, in the ornamental Jain character; also some clay signets, given to pilgrims, bearing Jain symbols. All these relics attest the prevailing religion to have been Jain.
[32]. A gross exaggeration of the annalist, or a cypher in each added by the copyist.
[33]. Dhar, or Dharanagari, was the most ancient capital of this tribe, the most numerous of the Agnikula races. See a sketch of the Puars, or Pramaras, Vol. I. p. [107]. [The proverb is repeated by Forbes, Rāsmāla, 115.]
[34]. [The story reads like a piece of sympathetic or imitative magic.]
[35]. There is no interregnum in Rajwara; the king never dies.
[36]. [? Nikhang, ‘a quiver.’]
[37]. This affords a most important synchronism, corroborative of the correctness of these annals. Raja Valabhsen of Patan (Anhilwara) immediately followed Chamund Rae, who was dispossessed of the throne by Mahmud of Ghazni, in the year A.D. 1011, or S. 1067. [Valabhsen Durlabha, A.D. 1010-22.] Valabhsen died the year of his installation, and was succeeded by Durlabh, whose period has also been synchronically fixed by an inscription belonging to the Pramaras.—See Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. i. p. 223. [The annalist seems to have confounded Anhilwāra Pātan in Gujarāt with Patan Munām, also called Fatan or Patanpur, five miles from Rahīmyār Railway Station, on E. bank of the Indus, locally called Sej (Malik Muhammad Dīn, Bahāwalpur State Gazetteer, A. 376 f.).]
[38]. This date, S. 1035, is evidently an error of the copyist. Bachera married Balabhsen’s daughter in S. 1067, and he died in S. 1100; so that it should be either S. 1055 or 1065. It is important to clear this point, as Rawal Bachera was the opponent of Mahmud of Ghazni in his invasion of India, A.H. 303, A.D. 1000, = S. 1056 or S. 1066, the Samvat era being liable to a variation of ten years (Colebrooke). If we are right, a passage of Ferishta, which has puzzled the translators, should run thus: “Mahmud directed his march against the Bhatti, and passing Multan arrived at Bahra, a Bhatti city.”—Compare Dow, vol. i. p. 39 (2nd ed.), and Briggs, vol. i. p. 38.
[39]. See Map. This was one of the points touched at in Mr. Elphinstone’s journey. [The town is about 48 miles N.W. of Bīkaner city.]
[40]. The chief of the Guhilots is now settled at Bhavnagar, at the estuary of the Mahi; where I visited him in 1823. The migration of the family from Kherdhar occurred about a century after that period, according to the documents in the Rao’s family. And we have only to look at the opening of the Annals of Marwar to see that from its colonization by the Rathors the Gohil community of Kherdhar was finally extinguished. To the general historian these minute facts may be unimportant, but they cease to be so when they prove the character of these annals for fidelity.