[15]. [On head-shaving as a mark of slavery see Jātaka, Cambridge trans., v. 125; Anantha Krishna Iyer, Tribes and Castes of Cochin, ii. 337; BG, ix. Part i. 232.]
[16]. I remember in my subaltern days, and wanderings through countries then little known, one of my Rajput soldiers at the well, impatient for water, asked a woman for the rope and bucket by the uncivil term of rand: “Main Rajputni che,” ‘I am a Rajputni,’ she replied in the Hara dialect, to which tribe she belonged, “aur Rajput ki ma cho,” ‘and the mother of Rajputs.’ At the indignant reply the hands of the brave Kalyan were folded, and he asked her forgiveness by the endearing and respectful epithet of “mother.” It was soon granted, and filling his brass vessel, she dismissed him with the epithet of “son,” and a gentle reproof. Kalyan was himself a Rajput, and a bolder lives not, if he still exists; this was in 1807, and in 1817 he gained his sergeant’s knot, as one of the thirty-two firelocks of my guard, who led the attack, and defeated a camp of fifteen hundred Pindaris.
[17]. Laws, ii. 129.
[18]. Ibid. iii. 114.
[19]. Ibid. iii. 57, 60, 61, 62, 63.
[20]. I have conversed for hours with the Bundi queen-mother on the affairs of her government and welfare of her infant son, to whom I was left guardian by his dying father. She had adopted me as her brother; but the conversation was always in the presence of a third person in her confidence, and a curtain separated us. Her sentiments showed invariably a correct and extensive knowledge, which was equally apparent in her letters, of which I had many. I could give many similar instances.
[21]. Ferishta in his history [ii. 217 ff.] gives an animated picture of Durgavati, queen of Garha, defending the rights of her infant son against Akbar’s ambition. Like another Boadicea, she headed her army, and fought a desperate battle with Asaf Khan, in which she was wounded and defeated; but scorning flight, or to survive the loss of independence, she, like the antique Roman in such a predicament, slew herself on the field of battle. [For Durgāvati see Badaoni, trans. W. H. Lowe, ii. 65; Elliot-Dowson v. 169, 288, vi. 118 ff.; Sleeman, Rambles, 190 f.
Whoever desires to judge of the comparative fidelity of the translations of this writer, by Dow [ii. 224 ff.] and Briggs, cannot do better than refer to this very passage. The former has clothed it in all the trappings of Ossianic decoration: the latter gives “a plain unvarnished tale,” which ought to be the aim of every translator.
[22]. Sachha is very comprehensive; in common parlance it is the opposite of ‘untrue’; but it means ‘loyal, upright, just.’
[23]. [Āīn, iii. 114.]