Birslabās, 19th.—The route over the most fertile plains of Mewar; but one continuous mass of jungle and rank grass. The Maharaja came out to meet me, a courteous, polished Rajput. He is of the Ranawat clan, descended from Rana Amra Singh, and the elder branch of the Shahpura family. Both his father and grandfather fell defending the cause of Shah Jahan against the usurper Aurangzeb, which lost him his birthright; but he has five villages left attached to Birslabas. Encamped near the altars of his heroic ancestors.
Amba, 21st; six and a half miles.—The route over a scene of desolation; fine fields, fruitful of grass and ruins. Sent one of my Brahmans to the town of Akola, two coss distant, and had several inscriptions copied; they were all immunities or grants of privileges to the printers of that town, thence called Chhipi-ka-Akola, to distinguish [682] it from another of the same name. I halted at Birslabas, received several visits, and held interesting conversations with the Maharaja; but fever and ague leave the mind in a sorry state. I can pay no attention to barometer or perambulator; of the latter Babu Mahesh keeps a diary, and on his intelligence I can depend.
Hamīrgarh,[[19]] 22nd.—This town belongs to Biramdeo, Ranawat, the son of Dhiraj Singh, who was the chief adviser of the Salumbar princes in the rebellion of S. 1843, during which he obtained it. The present chief is an oaf, always intoxicated; and as he did not discharge the Baoris, or professional thieves in his service, on the return of these days of peace, he was deprived of two towns amounting to seven thousand rupees annual rent. He ought, indeed, by the treaty of A.D. 1818, to have lost Hamirgarh, but he contrived by various indirect means to elude it, and to retain this, one of the most thriving places in Mewar. It contains about eight hundred inhabited houses, tenanted chiefly by manufacturers of chintz and dopattas, or ‘scarfs,’ such as are worn by all the Rajputnis. It has a fine lake, filled with a variety of wild duck, which live unmolested amidst the singhara[[20]] and lotus. The more ancient name of this place is Bakrol, as I found by two inscriptions, which again furnish specimens of sumptuary legislation.
Siyāna,[[21]] 23rd; eight miles and three furlongs.—We are now in the very heart of Mewar, plains extending as far as the eye can reach. Traces of incipient prosperity are visible, but it will require years to repair the mischief of the last quarter of a century. Passed through Ujhana, Amli, Neuria—all surrendered in consequence of the treaty of 1818: the last-mentioned, together with Siyana, from the ‘Red Riever,’ as we have nicknamed the chieftain of Badesar. The prospect from this ground is superb: the Udaipur hills in the distance; those of Pur and Gurla,[[22]] with their cupolas, on our right; the fantastic peak of Barak rising insulated from the plain. We are now approaching a place of rest, which we all much require; though I fear Carey’s will be one of perpetuity. Saw a beautiful mirage (si-kot) this morning, the certain harbinger of the cold season. The ridge of Pur underwent a thousand transformations, and the pinnacle of Barak was crowned with a multitude of spires. There is not a more delightful relaxation than to watch the changes of these evanescent objects, emblems of our own ephemeral condition. This was the first really cold morning. The Panchayat, or elders of Pur, with several of the most respectable inhabitants to the number of fifty, came all this way to see me, and testify their happiness and gratitude! Is there another nook in the earth where such a principle is professed, much [683] less acted on? Hear their spokesman’s reply to my question, “Why did they take the trouble to come so far from home?” I give it verbatim: “Our town had not two hundred inhabited dwellings when you came amongst us: now there are twelve hundred: the Rana is our sovereign, but you are to us next to Parameswar (the Almighty); our fields are thriving, trade is reviving, and we have not been molested even for the wedding-portion.[[23]] We are happy, and we have come to tell you so; and what is five coss, or five hundred, to what you have done for us?” All very true, my friends, if you think so. After a little wholesome advice to keep party feuds from the good town of Pur, they took leave, to return their ten miles on foot.
Since the town council left me, I have been kept until half-past seven by the Baba of Mangrop, and the Thakur of Rawarda, whose son I redeemed from captivity in the fortress of Ajmer. Worn out; but what is to be done? It is impossible to deny one’s self to chiefs who have also come miles from the best motives. Now for coffee and the charpai.
Rāsmi,[[24]] October 23.—The direct or usual route is thirteen and a half miles, but as I made a circuit by Marauli, it was fifteen. Had I taken the common route, I should have followed the Banas the whole way; as it was, for the last half I skirted its low banks, its limpid stream flowing gently to the north-east. Found the cultivation considerably increased compared with last year; but it is still a desert, overgrown with grass and brushwood, in which these little cultivated oases are “few and far between.” Marauli was thriving in the midst of ruin, with fifty-seven ploughs at work; there were but twelve when I entered Mewar. Rasmi has also seventy families instead of the twenty I found; and in a few years I hope to see them greatly increased. We had some delicious trout from the Banas, some of them equal to what we caught last year at Pahona, the largest of which weighed seventy-three rupees, or about two pounds, and near seventeen inches long by nine in girth. My friend Tom David Steuart was more successful than we were in getting them to rise at the fly; in revenge we took them, unsportsmanlike, in a net. This appears to be the season for eating them.
Rasmi is a place of considerable interest, and tradition is at work to establish its antiquity, connecting it with the name of Raja Chand; but whether the Pramar of [684] Chandravati, or the Chauhan of Abhaner, I cannot learn. There were vestiges of past days; but even in these regions, where to a certain extent they respect antiquity, I find the ruined temples are despoiled, and appropriated to modern fabrics. Amongst the groves of Rasmi I found some fragments of patriarchal legislation, prohibiting “the ladies from carrying away under their ghaghra (petticoats) any portion of the sadh, or village-feast!” I also discovered a tablet raised by the collective inhabitants of Rasmi, which well illustrates the truth, that they had always some resort against oppression. It runs as follows: “Written by the merchants, bankers, printers, and assembled panchayat of Rasmi: Whereas the collector of town-duties oppressed the merchant by name Pakar, and exacted exorbitant duties on grain and reza (unbleached cloth), for which he abandoned the place; but the government-officer having forsworn all such conduct for the future, and prevailed on him to return, and having taken the god to witness—we, the assembled panch, have set up this stone to record it. Asarh the 3rd, S. 1819.”
Fourteen years have elapsed since I first put my foot in Mewar, as a subaltern of the Resident’s[[25]] escort, when it passed through Rasmi. Since that period, my whole thoughts have been occupied with her history and that of her neighbours.
Jāsma,[[26]] 24th; distance fourteen miles, but not above twelve direct.—This in past times was a township of celebrity, and in the heart of the finest soil in India, with water at hand; but it had not a single habitation when we entered the country; now, it has eighty families. Our way for fourteen miles was through one wide waste of untrodden plain; the Banas continued our companion half-way, when she departed for Galund to our right. Saw many inscriptions, of which we shall give an account hereafter. Passed the copper-mines of Dariba;[[27]] but they are filled with water, and the miners are all dead.
Sanwār,[[28]] 25th; distance twelve and a half miles by the direct route through Lonera; but I made a circuit to visit the celebrated field of battle between Rawal Samarsi, of Chitor, and Bhola Bhim, of Anhilwara Patan, recorded by the bard Chand in his Raesa. This magnificent plain, like all the rest of this once garden of Mewar, is overgrown with the kesula or palas, and lofty rank grass; and the sole circumstance by which it is known is the site. The bard describes the battle as having occurred in Khet-Karera, or field of Karera, and that the Solanki, on his defeat, retreated across the river, meaning the Berach, which is a few miles to the south. A little way [685] from hence is the Sangam, or point of junction of the Berach and Banas, which, with a third small stream, forms a triveni; at their point of confluence there is an altar to Mahadeo.