The daily lives of these Rajput ladies of Mewár and Márwár may not have many deep interests but they are by no means empty. Among the greater chiefs, the woman’s life is the usual life of palaces, with luxuries at command and with corresponding duties. There are servants to order and affairs to manage. Most ladies read and hear recitations; maid-servants sometimes sing; and children have to be cared for and tended. Sewing is a common amusement in which most Rajput women are expert. Occasionally a Rajput girl is heard of who, in the remoter districts, goes out riding or even shooting, dressed sometimes as a man, though seldom indeed can such amusements, in a caste which follows the seclusion of women, be entertained after childhood. There are, however, among advanced chiefs with modern ideas not a few instances in which there is a tennis-court in the palace grounds for the ladies, where the wives play together or with their husband and his nearest relations. And there are some rare States where even the semblance of seclusion is being discarded and the ladies drive abroad or shoot big game in the jungle.
These, however, are the liberties of the great. Among the lesser nobility, where riches are usually wanting and position has to be maintained by a stricter observance of traditional rule, the manner of life is busier, with less need of pleasure-seeking. In such a minor country-house, the wife will usually rise with the sun. If her mother-in-law is alive, she goes first to her room and wishes her a good morning. Then comes, what is in all such households a duty of first importance, the care of the dairy-farm with its noble white cows. The milk and whey is always distributed to servants and dependents by the lady herself. That done, she has a bath and says a short prayer for her husband, sees the children have their breakfast, and visits the kitchen. The proudest nobleman’s wife would think shame of herself, if she did not superintend the cooking and at need take a hand in the baking of cakes and special delicacies. She sees to it that her husband and all male guests—usually numerous—have their breakfast before she herself eats her meal with her women. In that hot land, all sleep who can in the middle of the day, and the Rajput woman is no exception. When a couple of hours later she rises, she seeks for some amusement for the afternoon. All Rajput ladies are brought up from childhood to the strictest care of their persons and are taught even physical exercises. Before they are married they have learnt every device by which they can preserve or heighten their beauty and every art by which to sharpen their husbands’ zest and devotion. For this purpose there are many things they learn which in Europe would be disapproved. But it is largely due to this care that they are faultlessly neat, fair, and attractive, and that so often their beauty lasts to advanced years. Thus in the quiet afternoon hours one of the frequent amusements is to inspect and brush clothes. Ladies keep large wooden chests, hasped and bolted with iron and often beautifully carved, very like the bridal chests of the Italian Renaissance. In them are stored the clothes in whose neatness and beauty they place their vanity. One by one they are taken out by the maid-servants and dusted and shown to the mistress and refolded and put back. It is a poor woman indeed who does not have at least fifteen to twenty skirts, from the cheaper cotton or red Turkey cloth to the richest silks and gold embroidery. Mantles (Saris) are at least as many and of bodices there may be forty or fifty. The maid-servants who fold the clothes are a notable institution. Rather household slaves than servants, born and bred in the house, and almost of pure Rajput blood themselves, they are the intimates of their mistress. One or two of them there will always be who have been her affectionate companions since childhood and have, on marriage, accompanied her to her new home. Such a girl is the lady’s confidant and constant comrade, who looks to all her comforts, rubs her down after her bath and does skilful massage, knows all her secrets, brings her all rumours of the world, sleeps at her side in her husband’s absence, and is her much cherished friend. Often, especially in youth, the two spend their afternoons sewing together. Amongst the Rajputs of Káthiawád, besides the pretty bodices that they often sew themselves, it is the custom for girls to embroider fringed strips of cloth for hanging across doors or squares to fasten upon walls for use as ornament at marriages and festivals. Little pieces of glass or mica are let into the embroidery and the patterns very much resemble those still sewn by peasant women in Hungary, whither they were also brought from the same tribal centres of Asia. Reading, visiting, chatting take up the rest of the day till evening approaches. Then the Rajput woman puts on her richer dresses and her jewelry and gets ready for dinner and the night.
RAJPUT LADY FROM CUTCH
The Rajput women of Káthiawád and Cutch deserve some special mention, both for their beauty and their exceptional cleverness. Beautiful they are above all other women of India except only in Kashmir, fair with a rich fresh golden tint of skin, with full soft eyes, and with long black hair. In their apparel they are particularly tasteful, and the green hues that they specially affect set off their complexion at its best under the Indian sky. Of their intelligence there is no doubt, and throughout the Rajput country they are respected for their talents and perhaps, shall we add, feared for their intrigue. Jealous and ambitious to a fault, they are not ignorant even of the use of poison; and at least it is a proverb that “She marries the land, not the man.” Gallant and courageous they are, even in evil, and it is not so long ago that the tale was told of a not-virtuous princess that night after night in the dark hours saddled a riding camel with her own hands in the stable and rode six miles out to join a lover, and before dawn, another six miles back, unseen, unknown, with the threat of a dagger-thrust, if discovered, always in her mind. But when well-beloved and cherished, these Rajput women are charming companions and faithful, assiduous helpmates.
Besides the tribes who can claim to be Rajputs of authentic origin, descended as was said from the Central Asian invaders who transformed ancient India to its present type, it follows reasonably enough from the constitution of the tribal entities and from the eternal facts of power and sovereignty, that there are many others who put forward a claim more or less substantiated to a similar recognition. Such are the slightly later invaders of similar strains who came to India from Scythia by a different road, the Jhadejas of Cutch and Káthiawád, for instance, with their frequent marriages with Mussulmans. These have at least a perfectly legitimate title to the name by a sort of cadet copyhold. The hill Rajputs of the Himalayas, among whom for generations survived the last indigenous school of Indian painting, can also fairly put forward a claim based on historical descent. But in addition, throughout Northern India, whenever by the fortune of circumstance a new tribe, not yet included as a caste in the orthodox Hindu system, has attained to princely power, the claim to true Rajput ancestry, for a time overlaid and obscured by the dust-layers of adversity, is propounded and defended. Minstrels in India are no less complacent than genealogists and heralds in Europe; and a ruling chief can have a mythical founder of his line disinterred from unknown records as readily as can a British peer. Instances are many and notorious; but it would be invidious to retail cases, where very often the tribe or its ruling family are in every way worthy of inclusion.
