1683.—"I went a hunting with ye Ragea, who was attended with 2 or 300 men, armed with bows and arrows, swords and targets."—Hedges, Diary, March 1; [Hak. Soc. i. 66].
1786.—Tippoo with gross impropriety addresses Louis XVI. as "the Rajah of the French."—Select Letters, 369.
RAJAMUNDRY, n.p. A town, formerly head-place of a district, on the lower Godavery R. The name is in Telegu Rājamahendravaramu, 'King-chief('s)-Town,' [and takes its name from Mahendradeva of the Orissa dynasty; see Morris, Godavery Man. 23].
RAJPOOT, s. Hind. Rājpūt, from Skt. Rājaputra, 'King's Son.' The name of a great race in India, the hereditary profession of which is that of arms. The name was probably only a honorific assumption; but no race in India has furnished so large a number of princely families. According to Chand, the great medieval bard of the Rājpūts, there were 36 clans of the race, issued from four Kshatriyas (Parihār, Pramār, Solankhī, and Chauhān) who sprang into existence from the sacred Agnikuṇḍa or Firepit on the summit of Mount Abū. Later bards give five eponyms from the firepit, and 99 clans. The Rājpūts thus claim to be true Kshatriyas, or representatives of the second of the four fundamental castes, the Warriors; but the Brahmans do not acknowledge the claim, and deny that the true Kshatriya is extant. Possibly the story of the fireborn ancestry hides a consciousness that the claim is factitious. "The Rajpoots," says Forbes, "use animal food and spirituous liquors, both unclean in the last degree to their puritanic neighbours, and are scrupulous in the observance of only two rules,—those which prohibit the slaughter of cows, and the remarriage of widows. The clans are not forbidden to eat together, or to intermarry, and cannot be said in these respects to form separate castes" (Rās-mālā, reprint 1878, p. 537).
An odd illustration of the fact that to partake of animal food, and especially of the heroic repast of the flesh of the wild boar killed in the chase (see Terry's representation of this below), is a Rājpūt characteristic, occurs to the memory of one of the present writers. In Lord Canning's time the young Rājpūt Rāja of Alwar had betaken himself to degrading courses, insomuch that the Viceroy felt constrained, in open [durbar] at Agra, to admonish him. A veteran political officer, who was present, inquired of the agent at the Alwar Court what had been the nature of the conduct thus rebuked. The reply was that the young prince had become the habitual associate of low and profligate Mahommedans, who had so influenced his conduct that among other indications, he would not eat wild pig. The old Political, hearing this, shook his head very gravely, saying, 'Would not eat Wild Pig! Dear! Dear! Dear!' It seemed the ne plus ultra of Rājpūt degradation! The older travellers give the name in the quaint form Rashboot, but this is not confined to Europeans, as the quotation from Sidi 'Alí shows; though the aspect in which the old English travellers regarded the tribe, as mainly a pack of banditti, might have made us think the name to be shaped by a certain sense of aptness. The Portuguese again frequently call them Reys Butos, a form in which the true etymology, at least partially, emerges.
1516.—"There are three qualities of these Gentiles, that is to say, some are called Razbutes, and they, in the time that their King was a Gentile, were Knights, the defenders of the Kingdom, and governors of the Country."—Barbosa, 50.
1533.—"Insomuch that whilst the battle went on, Saladim placed all his women in a large house, with all that he possessed, whilst below the house were combustibles for use in the fight; and Saladim ordered them to be set fire to, whilst he was in it. Thus the house suddenly blew up with great explosion and loud cries from the unhappy women; whereupon all the people from within and without rushed to the spot, but the Resbutos fought in such a way that they drove the Guzarat troops out of the gates, and others in their hasty flight cast themselves from the walls and perished."—Correa, iii. 527.
" "And with the stipulation that the 200 pardaos, which are paid as allowance to the lascarins of the two small forts which stand between the lands of Baçaim and the Reys buutos, shall be paid out of the revenues of Baçaim as they have been paid hitherto."—Treaty of Nuno da Cunha with the K. of Cambaya, in Subsidios, 137.
c. 1554.—"But if the caravan is attacked, and the Bāts (see [BHAT]) kill themselves, the Rashbūts, according to the law of the Bāts, are adjudged to have committed a crime worthy of death."—Sidi 'Ali Kapudān, in J. As., Ser. I., tom. ix. 95.
[1602.—"Rachebidas."—Couto, Dec. viii. ch. 15.]