[15]. [‘Lord of the World,’ a title of the Rāna of Mewār.]
[16]. One of the queens, a princess of Bikaner.
[17]. The two villages he obtained in lieu of Banwal.
[18]. [About 90 miles N.E. of Udaipur city.]
CHAPTER 3
Morwan, February 1.—Yesterday, Man Singh took up the whole of my time with the feuds of Lawa and their consequences. It obliged me to halt, in order to make inquiries into the alienated lands in its vicinity. Morwan is, or rather was, a township of some consequence, and head of a tappa or subdivision of a district. It is rated, with its contiguous hamlets, at seven thousand rupees annual rent. The situation is beautiful, upon heights pleasingly diversified, with a fine lake to the westward, whose margin is studded with majestic tamarind trees. The soil is rich, and there is water in great abundance within twenty-five feet of the surface; but man is wanting! The desolation of solitude reigns throughout, for (as Rousseau observes) there is none to whom one can turn and say, que la solitude est belle!
I experienced another pang at seeing this fertile district revert to the destroyer, the savage Pathan, who had caused the desolation, and in the brief but expressive words of a Roman author, solitudinem facit, pacem appellat.[[1]] Morwan is included in the lands mortgaged for a war-contribution, but which with others has remained in the hands of the Mahratta mortgagees or their mercenary subordinates. But it is melancholy to reflect that, but for a false magnanimity towards our insidious, natural enemies, the Mahrattas, all these lands would have reverted to their legitimate masters, who are equally interested with ourselves in putting down predatory warfare. Justice, good policy, and humanity would have been better consulted had the Mahrattas been wholly banished from Central India. When I contrasted this scene with the traces of incipient prosperity I had left behind me, I felt a satisfaction that the alienated acres produced nothing to the possessor, save luxuriant grass, and the leafless kesula or palas [615].[[2]]
Antiquities at Morwan.
Having heard of an inscription at the township of Aner, five miles distant, to the south-west, I requested my old Guru to take a ride and copy it. It was of modern date, merely confirming the lands of Aner to the Brahmans. The tablet is in the temple of Chaturbhuja (the four-armed divinity), built and endowed by Rana Sangram Singh in S. 1570 (A.D. 1514); to whose pious testament a codicil is added by Rana Jagat Singh, S. 1791, imprecating an anathema on the violator of it. There was also engraved upon one of the columns a voluntary gift, from the village-council of Aner to the divinity, of the first-fruits of each harvest; namely, two and a half sers from each khalla, or heap, of the spring-crops, and the same of the autumnal. The date, S. 1845 (A.D. 1789), shows that it was intended to propitiate the deity during the wars of Mewar [616].