[16]. [Ten miles S. of Deoli cantonment.]
[17]. The indigenous Mina affords here an excellent practical illustration of Manu’s axiom, that “the right in the soil belongs to him who first cleared and tilled the land” [Laws, ix. 44]. The Rajput conqueror claims and receives the tribute of the soil, but were he to attempt to enforce more, he would soon be brought to his senses by one of their various modes of self-defence—incendiarism, self-immolation, or abandonment of the lands in a body. We have mystified a very simple subject by basing our arguments on the arrangements of the Muhammadan conqueror. If we mean to follow his example, whose doctrine was the law of the sword, let us do it, but we must not confound might with right: consult custom and tradition throughout India, where traces of originality yet exist, and it will invariably appear that the right in the soil is in the cultivator, who maintains even in exile the hakk bapota-ka-bhum, in as decided a manner as any freeholder in England. But Colonel Briggs has settled this point, to those who are not blinded by prejudice.
[18]. [A deputation of welcome.]
CHAPTER 8
Attempted Poisoning of the Author. Jahāzpur, October 1.—My journalizing had nearly terminated yesterday. Duncan and Carey being still confined to their beds, my relative, Captain Waugh, sat down with me to dinner; but fever and ague having destroyed all appetite on my part, I was a mere spectator. I had, however, fancied a cake of makkai flour, but had not eaten two mouthfuls before I experienced extraordinary sensations; my head seemed expanding to an enormous size, as if it alone would have filled the tent; my tongue and lips felt tight and swollen, and though I underwent no alarm, nor suffered the slightest loss of sense, I deemed it the prelude to one of those violent attacks, which have assailed me for several years past, and brought me to the verge of death. I begged Captain Waugh to leave me; but he had scarcely gone before a constriction of the throat came on, and I thought all was over. I rose up, however, and grasped [674] the tent-pole, when my relative re-entered with the surgeon. I beckoned them not to disturb my thoughts, instead of which they thrust some ether and compounds down my throat, which operated with magical celerity. I vomited violently; the constriction ceased; I sunk on my pallet, and about two in the morning I awoke, bathed in perspiration, and without a remnant of disease. It was difficult to account for this result: the medical oracle fancied I had been poisoned, but I was loth to admit it. If the fact were so, the poison must have been contained in the cake, and as it would have been too great a risk to retain the person who prepared it, the baker was discharged. It was fortunate that the symptoms were such as to induce Captain Waugh to describe them so fully, and it was still more fortunate for me that the doctor was not able to go out with his fishing-rod, for the whole transaction did not last five minutes. This is about the fourth time I have been ‘upon the brink’ (kinari pahuncha) since I entered Mewar.[[1]]
Khajuri, October 2.—Left my sick friends this morning to nurse each other, and having an important duty to perform at Mandalgarh, which is out of the direct route, appointed a rendezvous where I shall meet them when this work is over. I was for the first time compelled to shut myself up in my palki; incessant fever and ague for the last two months have disorganized a frame which has had to struggle with many of these attacks. We are now in what is termed the Karar, for so the tract is named on both banks of the Banas to the verge of the plateau; and my journey was through a little nation of robbers by birth and profession; but their kamthas (bows) were unstrung, and their arrows rusting in the quiver. Well may our empire in the east be called one of opinion, when a solitary individual of Britain, escorted by a few of Skinner’s Horse, may journey through the valley of Khajuri, where, three short years ago, every crag would have concealed an ambush prepared to plunder him! At present, I could by signal have collected four thousand bowmen around me, to protect or to plunder; though the Minas, finding that their rights are respected, are subsiding into regular tax-paying subjects, and call out with their betters “Atal Raj!” (“May your sway be everlasting!”) We had a grand convocation of the Mina Naiks, and, in the Rana’s name, I distributed crimson turbans and scarfs; for as through our mediation the Rana had just recovered the district of Jahazpur, he charged me with its settlement. I found these Minas true children of nature, who for the first time seemed to feel they were received within the pale of society, instead of being considered as outcasts. “The heart must leap kindly back to kindness,” is a sentiment as powerfully [675] felt by the semi-barbarians of the Karar as by the more civilized habitants of other climes.
Our route was through a very narrow valley, little susceptible of cultivation, though a few patches were visible near the hamlets, scattered here and there. The scene was wild, and the cool morning air imparted vigour to my exhausted frame. The slopes of the valley in many places are covered with trees to the very summit of the mountains, on which the kukra or wild cock was crowing his matins, and we were in momentary expectation of seeing some bears, fit associates of the Minas, in their early promenades. As we approached Khajuri, the valley widened, so as to admit of its being termed a township of fifty-two thousand bighas, which afforded another proof of ancestral wisdom, for it was in sasan, or grant to the Brahmans: but the outlaws of the Karar, though they sacrifice a tithe of their plunder to ‘our Lady of the Pass’ (Ghata Rani), have little consideration for the idlers of the plains. This feeling is not confined to the Minas; for the Bhumia Rajputs, despising all the anathemas of the church, have seized on the best lands of Khajuri. But only a small portion of the Bawana (fifty-two thousand), about seventeen thousand English acres, is arable.
Kachola or Kachaura, October 3.—Execrable roads! Our route continued through the same valley, occasionally expanding to the westward. Half-way, we passed the baronial castle of Amargarh, whose chief, Rawat Dalil Singh, is now on duty with his quota at Jahazpur, but his uncle Pahar Singh, who is a great favourite with our party (by whom he is known as ‘the mountain-lion’), came to meet and conduct me to the castle. But I was too unwell, or should on many accounts have desired to visit this somewhat celebrated abode of one of the Babas (infants) of Mewar, whose feud I maintained for him against his potent neighbour of Shahpura, which has elsewhere been related.[[2]] It is quite unassailable, being built on an isolated rock, and, except by a circuitous path on one side, there is no passage through the dense jungle that surrounds it: a mode of fortifying recommended by Manu,[[3]] but which, if universally followed in this land so studded with fortresses, would waste no small portion of the sovereignty. I was quite satisfied with this view of the castle of Dalil, and enjoyed from the point of descent a noble prospect. In the foreground is the cenotaph of Rana Arsi, in the centre of the valley, which extended and gradually opened towards Mandalgarh, whose blue ridge was distinctly visible in the distance. The hills to the right were broken abruptly into masses, and as far as the eye could stretch [676] on every side, were disordered heaps of gigantic rocks. To reclaim this district, the largest in Mewar, I am now intent, having convoked all the Bhumias and Patels of its three hundred and sixty townships at the chief city, Mandalgarh. My friend, Pahar Singh, as locum tenens of his uncle, expended powder on the occasion; and must have charged his patereroes[[4]] to the muzzle. Paharji joined me on his Panchkalyan (so they term a horse with four white legs and a white nose), and determined to escort me to Mandalgarh; a service, as he said, not only due from his family, but in accordance with the commands of his sovereign the Rana, of whom Pahar was a faithful, zealous, and valiant supporter during his adversity. The Bhumias of Mandalgarh, in fact, generally deserve the praise of having maintained this stronghold without either command or assistance throughout the whole period of his misfortunes.
Kachaura is a township rated at six thousand rupees of annual revenue in the rent-roll of Mewar, but is now an inconsiderable village. In former times, it must have been a place of importance, for all around, to a considerable distance, the ground is strewed with fragments of sculpture of a superior character, and one spot is evidently the site of the cenotaphs of the family. The town had stood on the western bank of an immense lake, which through neglect is now a swamp; and, half-way up the hill, are disclosed, amidst the brushwood of the dho,[[5]] the ruins of a temple: but tradition has perished with the population, who were subjected at once to the curse of constant foreign invasion and the inroads of the Minas of the Karar. Thus a soil, whose richness is apparent from the luxuriance of its meadows, is in a state of entire desolation. Kachaura forms the patta of Shahpura in this district, whose chief has to serve two masters, for he is a tributary of Ajmer for Shahpura, itself a fief of Mewar, and holds an estate of about forty thousand rupees of annual rent in Mandalgarh, which has been two years under sequestration for his refusal to attend the summons to Udaipur, and for his barbarous murder of the chief of Amargarh.[[6]] This is a state of things which ought not to exist. When we freed these countries from the Mahrattas, we should have renounced the petty tributes imposed upon the surrounding chiefs not within the limits of the district of Ajmer, and the retention of which is the source of irritating discussions with these princes through the feudatories. Presuming on this external influence, the Shahpura Raja set his sovereign’s warrant at defiance, and styled himself a subject of Ajmer; nor was it until he found he was bound by a double tie of duty, that he deigned to appear at the capital. The resumption of the estate in Mandalgarh alone overcame the inertness of the chief of Shahpura; he has already too much in the Chaurasi, or eighty-four [677] townships of Shahpura, for such a subject as he is, who prefers a foreign master to his legitimate lord. I would recommend that the Rathor chiefs of Marwar, beyond the Aravalli hills, now tributary to Ajmer, and who consequently only look to that State, should be replaced under their proper head: the sacrifice is of no moment to us, and to them it will be a boon.