Book 4 — CHAPTER 14
Reading edition
Rāna Jai Singh, A.D. 1680-98.
—Rana Jai Singh took possession of the
Gaddi
in S. 1737 (
A.D.
1681). A circumstance occurred at his birth, which as descriptive of manners may deserve notice. A few hours only intervened between his entrance into the world and that of another son called Bhim. It is customary for the father to bind round the arm of the new-born infant a root of that species of grass called the
amardub
, the ‘imperishable’
dub
, well known for its nutritive properties and luxuriant vegetation under the most intense heat.
The Rana first attached the ligature round the arm of the youngest, apparently an oversight, though in fact from superior affection for his mother. As the boys approached to manhood, the Rana, apprehensive that this preference might create dissension, one day drew his sword, and placing it in the hand of Bhim (the elder), said, it was better to use it at once on his brother, than hereafter to endanger the safety of the State. This [392] appeal to his generosity had an instantaneous effect, and he not only ratified, ‘by his father’s throne,’
the acknowledgment of the sovereign rights of his brother, but declared, to remove all fears, “he was not his son if he again drank water within the pass of Debari”; and, collecting his retainers, he abandoned Udaipur to court Fortune where she might be kinder. The day was sultry, and on reaching the barrier he halted under the shade of a sacred fig-tree to bestow a last look upon the place of his birth. His cup-bearer (
Paniyari
) brought his silver goblet filled from the cool fountain, but as he
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raised it to his lips, he recollected that his vow was incomplete while within the portal; he poured the libation on the earth in the name of the Supreme, and casting the cup as an offering to the deity of the fountain, the huge gates closed upon the valley. He proceeded to Bahadur Shah, who conferred upon him the dignity (
mansab
) of a leader of three thousand five hundred horse, with the Bawana, or fifty-two districts for their support: but quarrelling with the imperial general, he was detached with his contingent west of the Indus, where he died.
Treaty between Rāna Jai Singh and Aurangzeb.
—Let us return to Jai Singh (
the lion of victory
). He concluded a treaty with Aurangzeb, conducted by Prince Azam and Dilir Khan, who took every occasion to testify his gratitude for the clemency of Rana Raj Singh, when blockaded in the defiles of the Aravalli. At this conference, the Rana was attended by ten thousand horse and forty thousand foot, besides the multitude collected from the mountains to view the ceremony, above one hundred thousand souls, who set up a shout of joy at the prospect of revisiting the plains, which disconcerted Azam, while Dilir expatiated on the perils from which the Rana’s generosity had liberated him. Azam, who said he was no stranger to the Rana’s illustrious house, concluded a treaty on the spot, in which, as a salvo for the imperial dignity, a nominal fine and surrender of three districts were inserted for aiding Akbar’s rebellion, and a hint that the regal colour (
crimson
) of his tents and umbrella [393] should be discontinued. That advantages were gained by the Rana, we may infer from Dilir’s sons being left as hostages for Azam’s good faith; a fact we learn from his farewell address to the Rana! “Your nobles are rude, and my children are the hostages of your safety; but if at the expense of their lives I can obtain the entire
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restoration of your country, keep your mind at ease, for there was friendship between your father and me.”
The Jaisamund Lake.
—But all other protection than what his sword afforded was futile; and though Dilir’s intentions were noble, he had little control over events: in less than five years after his accession, the Rana was again forced to fly the plains for the inaccessible haunts of Kamori. Yet, in spite of these untoward circumstances and uninterrupted warfare, such were the resources of this little State that the Rana completed a work which perpetuates his name. He threw a dam across a break in the mountains, the channel of an ever-flowing stream, by which he formed the largest lake in India,
giving it his own name, the Jaisamund, or sea of victory. Nature had furnished the hint for this undertaking, for there had always existed a considerable volume of water; but the Rana had the merit of uniting these natural buttresses, and creating a little sea from the Dhebar pool, its ancient appellation. The circumference cannot be less than thirty miles, and the benefits to cultivation, especially in respect to the article of rice, which requires perpetual irrigation, were great. On this huge rampart he erected a palace for his favourite queen, Komaladevi, a princess of the Pramara race, familiarly known as the Ruthi Rani, or ‘testy queen.’
Rana Jai Singh and his heir Amar Singh.
—Domestic unhappiness appears to have generated in the Rana inaptitude to state affairs; and, unluckily, the favoured queen estranged him from his son. Amra, a name venerated in Mewar, was that of the heir of Jai Singh. His mother was of the Bundi house, a family which has performed great services to, and brought great calamities upon, the ancient sovereigns of Mewar. To the jealousies of the rival queens, one of them mother to the heir, the other the favourite of the sovereign, are attributed dissensions, which at such a juncture were a greater detriment than the loss of a battle, and which afford another illustration, if any were wanting, of the impolicy of polygamy. The annals of Mewar seldom exhibit those unnatural contentions for power, from which no other Hindu State was exempt; this was owing to the wholesome regulation of not investing the princes of the blood with any [394]
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political authority; and establishing as a counterpoise to natural advantages an artificial degradation of their rank, which placed them beneath the sixteen chief nobles of the State; which, while it exalted these in their own estimation, lessened the national humiliation, when the heirs-apparent were compelled to lead their quota in the
arrière-ban
of the empire.
Rebellion of Amar Singh.
—Rana Jai Singh, who had evinced such gallantry and activity in the wars of Aurangzeb, now secluded himself with Komala in the retreat of Jaisamund, leaving Amra under the guidance of the Pancholi
minister, at the capital. But he having personally insulted this chief officer of the State, in consequence of receiving a rebuke for turning loose an infuriated elephant in the town, the Rana left his retreat, and visiting Chitor in his tour, arrived at Udaipur. Amra awaited not his father’s arrival, but adding his mother’s resentments to a feeling of patriotic indignation at the abasement his indolence produced, fled to Bundi, took up arms, and, joined by many of his own nobles and Hara auxiliaries, returned at the head of ten thousand men. Desirous of averting civil war, the Rana retired to Godwar beyond the Aravalli, whence he sent the Ghanerao chieftain, the first feudatory of that department, to expostulate with his son. But Amra, supported by three-fourths of the nobles, made direct for Kumbhalmer to secure the State treasure, saved by the Depra governor for his sovereign. A failure in this project, the knowledge that the Rathors fostered the quarrel with a view to obtain Godwar, and the determination of the few chiefs yet faithful
to the Rana, to defend the Jhilwara pass to the last, made the prince listen to terms, which were ratified at the shrine of Eklinga, whereby the Rana was to return to the capital, and the prince to abide in exile at the new palace during the life of his father, which closed twenty years after his accession. Had he maintained the reputation he established in his early years, the times were well calculated for the redemption of his country’s independence; but documents which yet exist afford little reason to doubt that in his latter years a state of indolence,
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having all the effects of imbecility, supervened, and but for the formation of ‘the victorious sea,’ would have left his name a blank in the traditional history of Mewar.
Rāna Amar Singh II., A.D. 1698-1710.
—Amra II., who succeeded in S. 1756 (
A.D.
1700), had much of the gallantry [395] and active turn of mind of his illustrious namesake; but the degrading conflict with his father had much impaired the moral strength of the country, and counteracted the advantages which might have resulted from the decline of the Mogul power. The reigns of Raj Singh and Jai Singh illustrate the obvious truth, that on the personal character of the chief of a feudal government everything depends. The former, infusing by his talent and energy patriotic sentiments into all his subordinates, vanquished in a series of conflicts the vast military resources of the empire, led by the emperor, his sons, and chosen generals; while his successor, heir to this moral strength, and with every collateral aid, lowered her to a stage of contempt from which no talent could subsequently raise her.
Amra early availed himself of the contentions amongst the sons of Aurangzeb to anticipate events, and formed a private treaty[8] with the Mogul heir-apparent, Shah Alam, when commanded 461to the countries west of the Indus, on which occasion [396] the Mewar contingent[9] accompanied him, and fought several gallant actions under a Saktawat chieftain.
Breach between the Rājputs and the Mughal Empire.
—It is important to study the events of this period, which involved the overthrow of the Mogul power, and originated that form of society which paved the way to the dominion of Britain in these distant regions. From such a review a political lesson of great value may be learned, which will show a beacon warning us against the danger of trusting to mere physical power, unaided
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by the latent, but more durable support of moral influence. When Aurangzeb neglected the indigenous Rajputs, he endangered the keystone of his power; and in despising opinion, though his energetic mind might for a time render him independent of it, yet long before his death the enormous fabric reared by Akbar was tottering to its foundation: demonstrating to conviction that the highest order of talent, either for government or war, though aided by unlimited resources, will not suffice for the maintenance of power, unsupported by the affections of the governed. The empire of Aurangzeb was more extensive than that of Britain at this day—the elements of stability were incomparably more tenacious: he was associated with the Rajputs by blood, which seemed to guarantee a respect for their opinions; he possessed the power of distributing the honours and emoluments of the state, when a service could be rewarded by a province,
drawing at will supplies of warriors from the mountains of the west, as a check on his indigenous subjects, while these left the plains of India to control the Afghan amidst the snows of Caucasus. But the most devoted attachment and most faithful service were repaid by insults to their habits, and the imposition of an obnoxious tax; and to the jizya, and the unwise pertinacity with which his successors adhered to it, must be directly ascribed the overthrow of the monarchy. No condition was exempted from this odious and impolitic assessment, which was deemed by the tyrant a mild substitute for the conversion he once meditated of the entire Hindu race to the creed of Islam.
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Rājput Apostates.
—An abandonment of their faith was the Rajput’s surest road to the tyrant’s favour [397], and an instance of this dereliction in its consequences powerfully contributed to the annihilation of the empire. Rao Gopal, a branch of the Rana’s family, held the fief of Rampura, on the Chambal,
and was serving with a select quota of his clan in the wars of the Deccan, when his son, who had been left at home, withheld the revenues, which he applied to his own use instead of remitting them to his father. Rao Gopal complained to the emperor; but the son discovered that he could by a sacrifice not only appease Aurangzeb, but attain the object of his wishes: he apostatized from his faith, and obtained the emperor’s forgiveness, with the domain of Rampura. Disgusted and provoked at such infurious conduct, Rao Gopal fled the camp, made an unsuccessful attempt to redeem his estate, and took refuge with Rana Amra, his suzerain. This natural asylum granted to a chief of his own kin was construed by the tyrant into a signal of revolt, and Azam was ordered to Malwa to watch the Rana’s motions: conduct thus characterized in the memoirs of a Rajput chieftain,
one of the most devoted to Aurangzeb, and who died fighting for his son. “The emperor showed but little favour to his faithful and most useful subjects the Rajputs, which greatly cooled their ardour in his service.” The Rana took up arms, and Malwa joined the tumult; while the first irruption of the Mahrattas across the Nerbudda,
under Nima Sindhia, compelled the emperor to detach Raja Jai Singh to join Prince Azam. Amidst these accumulated troubles, the Mahrattas rising into importance, the Rajput feudatories disgusted and alienated, his sons and grandsons ready to commit each individual pretension to the decision of the sword, did Aurangzeb, after a reign of terror of half a century’s duration, breathe his last on the 28th Zilqa’da,
A.D.
1707 [February 21], at the city bearing his name—Aurangabad.
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Shāh Alam Bahādur Shāh, Emperor, A.D. 1707-12.
—At his death his second son Azam assumed the imperial dignity, and aided by the Rajput princes of Datia and Kotah,
who had always served in his division, he marched to Agra to contest the legitimate claims of his eldest brother Muazzam, who was advancing from Kabul supported by the contingents of Mewar and Marwar, and all western Rajwara. The battle of Jajau
[398] was fatal to Azam, who with his son Bedarbakht and the princes of Kotah and Datia was slain, when Muazzam ascended the throne under the title of Shah Alam Bahadur Shah. This prince had many qualities which endeared him to the Rajputs, to whom his sympathies were united by the ties of blood, his mother being a Rajput princess.
Had he immediately succeeded the beneficent Shah Jahan, the race of Timur, in all human probability, would have been still enthroned at Delhi, and might have presented a picture of one of the most powerful monarchies of Asia. But Aurangzeb had inflicted an incurable wound on the mind of the Hindu race, which for ever estranged them from his successors; nor were the virtues of Bahadur, during the short lustre of his sway, capable of healing it. The bitter fruit of a long experience had taught the Rajputs not to hope for amelioration from any graft of that stem, which, like the deadly Upas, had stifled the vital energies of Rajasthan, whose leaders accordingly formed a league for mutual preservation, which it would have been madness to dissolve merely because a fair portion of virtue was the inheritance of the tyrant’s successor. They had proved that no act of duty or subserviency could guarantee them from the infatuated abuse of power, and they were at length steeled against every appeal to their loyalty, replying with a trite adage, which we may translate ‘
quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat
,’—of common application with the Rajput in such a predicament.
The Rise of the Sikhs.
—The emperor was soon made to perceive the little support he had in future to expect from the Rajputs. Scarcely had he quashed the pretensions of Kambakhsh, his youngest brother, who proclaimed himself emperor in the Deccan, than he was forced to the north, in consequence of an insurrection
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of the Sikhs of Lahore. This singular race, the disciples (
sikhs
) of a teacher called Nanak, were the descendants of the Scythic Getae,
or Jat, of Transoxiana, who so early as the fifth century were established in the tract watered by the five arms (
Panjab
) of the Indus. Little more than a century has elapsed since their conversion from a spurious Hinduism to the doctrines of the sectarian Nanak, and their first attempt to separate themselves, in temporal as well as spiritual matters, from all control, and they are now the sole independent power within the limits [399] of the Mogul monarchy. On this occasion
the princes of Amber and Marwar visited the emperor, but left his camp without permission, and, as the historian
adds, manifested a design to struggle for independence. Such was the change in their mutual circumstances that the Mogul sent the heir-apparent to conciliate and conduct them to him; but they came at the head of all their native bands, when “they were gratified with whatever their insolence demanded”:
a splenetic effusion of the historian, which well paints their altered position. From the royal
urdu
,
or camp, they repaired to Rana Amra at Udaipur, where a triple league was formed, which once more united them to the head of their nation. This treaty of unity of interests against the common foe was solemnized by nuptial engagements, from which those princes had been excluded since the reigns of Akbar and Partap. To be readmitted to this honour was the basis of this triple alliance, in which they ratified on oath the renunciation of all connexion, domestic or political, with the empire. It was, moreover, stipulated that the sons of such marriage should be heirs, or if the issue were females, that they should never be dishonoured by being married to a Mogul.
Sacrifice of the Right of Primogeniture.
—But this remedy, as will be seen, originated a worse disease; it was a sacrifice of the rights of primogeniture (clung to by the Rajputs with extreme pertinacity), productive of the most injurious effects, which
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introduced domestic strife, and called upon the stage an umpire not less baneful than the power from whose iron grasp they were on the point of freeing themselves: for although this treaty laid prostrate the throne of Babur, it ultimately introduced the Mahrattas as partisans in their family disputes, who made the bone of contention their own.
The injudicious support afforded by the emperor to the apostate chief of Rampura first brought the triple federation into action. The Rana, upholding the cause of Himmat Singh, made an attack on Rampura, which the apostate usurper Ratan Singh, now Raj Muslim Khan, defeated, and was rewarded for [400] it by the emperor.[23] But the same report conveyed to the king “that the Rana determined to lay waste his country, and retire to the hills,”[24] which was speedily confirmed by the unwelcome intelligence that Sawaldas, an officer of the Rana’s, had attacked Firoz Khan, the governor of Pur Mandal, who was obliged to retreat with great loss to Ajmer;[25] on which occasion this loyal descendant of the illustrious Jaimall lost his life.[26] The brave Durgadas, who conveyed the rebellious Akbar through all opposition to a place of refuge, again appeared upon the stage—his own prince being unable to protect him, he had found a safe asylum at Udaipur, and had the sum of five hundred rupees daily paid for his expenditure—a princely liberality. But the result of this combination was reserved for the following reigns, Shah Alam being carried off by poison,[27] ere he could correct the disorders which were rapidly breaking up the empire from the Hindu-Kush to the ocean. Had his life been spared, his talents for business, his experience, and courteous manners might have retarded the ruin of the monarchy, which the utter unworthiness of his successor sunk beyond the power of man to redeem. Every 467subsequent succession was through blood; and the sons of Shah Alam performed the part for which they had so many great examples. Two brothers,[28] Sayyids, from the town of Barha in the Duab, were long the Warwicks of Hindustan, setting up and plucking down its puppet kings at their pleasure; they had elevated Farrukhsiyar when the triumvirs of Rajasthan commenced their operations.
Farrukhsīyar, Emperor, A.D. 1712-19.
—Giving loose to long-suppressed resentment, the Rajputs abandoned the spirit of toleration which it would have been criminal to preserve; and profiting by the lessons of their tyrants, they overthrew the mosques built on the sites of their altars, and treated the civil and religious officers of the government with indignity. Of these every town in Rajasthan had its
mulla
to proclaim the name of Muhammad, and its
kazi
for the administration of justice,—branches of government [401] entirely wrested from the hands of the native princes,
abusing the name of independence. But for a moment it was redeemed, especially by the brave Rathors, who had made a noble resistance, contesting every foot of land since the death of Jaswant Singh, and now his son Ajit entirely expelled the Moguls from Marwar. On this occasion the native forces of the triple alliance met at the salt lake of Sambhar, which was made the common boundary of their territory, and its revenues were equally divided amongst them.
The pageant of an emperor, guided by the Sayyids, or those who intrigued to supplant their ministry, made an effort to oppose the threatening measures of the Rajputs; and one of them, the Amiru-l-umara,[30] marched against Raja Ajit, who received private instructions from the emperor to resist his commander-in-chief, whose credit was strengthened by the means taken to weaken it, which engendered suspicions of treachery. Ajit leagued with the Sayyids, who held out to the Rathor an important share of power at court, and agreed to pay tribute and give a daughter in marriage to Farrukhsiyar.
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Marriage of Farrukhsīyar: Grant to the British.
—This marriage yielded most important results, which were not confined to the Moguls or Rajputs, for to it may be ascribed the rise of the British power in India. A dangerous malady,
rendering necessary a surgical operation upon Farrukhsiyar, to which the faculty of the court were unequal, retarded the celebration of the nuptials between the emperor and the Rajput princess of Marwar, and even threatened a fatal termination. A mission from the British merchants at Surat was at that time at court, and, as a last resource, the surgeon attached to it was called in, who cured the malady, and made the emperor happy in his bride.
His gratitude was displayed with oriental magnificence. The emperor desired Mr. Hamilton to name [402] his reward, and to the disinterested patriotism of this individual did the British owe the first royal grant or farman, conferring territorial possession and great commercial privileges. These were the objects of the mission, which till this occurrence had proved unsuccessful.
This gorgeous court ought to have been, and probably was, impressed with a high opinion of the virtuous self-denial of the inhabitants of Britain; and if history has correctly preserved the transaction, some mark of public gratitude should have been forthcoming from those who so signally benefited thereby. But to borrow the phraseology of the Italian historian, “Obligations which do not admit of being fully discharged are often repaid with the coin of ingratitude”: the remains of this man rest in the churchyard of Calcutta, without even a stone to mark the spot![33]
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The Jizya Reimposed.
—This marriage, which promised a renewal of interests with the Rajputs, was soon followed by the revival of the obnoxious jizya. The character of this tax, though much altered from its original imposition by Aurangzeb, when it was at once financial and religious, was held in unmitigated abhorrence by the Hindus from the complex association; and although it was revived chiefly to relieve pecuniary wants, it kindled a universal feeling of hatred amongst all classes, and quenched the little zeal which the recent marriage had inspired in the Rajputs of the desert. The mode and channel of its introduction evinced to them that there was no hope that the intolerant spirit which originally suggested it would ever be subdued. The weak Farrukhsiyar, desirous of snapping the leading-strings of the Sayyids, recalled to his court Inayatu-lla Khan,
the minister of Aurangzeb, and restored to him his office of Diwan, who, to use the words of the historian of the period, "did not consult the temper of the times, so very different from the reign of Aurangzeb, and the revival of the
jizya
came with him." Though by no means severe in its operation, not amounting to three-quarters per cent on annual income,
—from which the lame, the blind, and very poor were exempt,—it nevertheless raised a general spirit of hostility, particularly from its retaining the insulting distinction of a ‘tax on infidels.’ Resistance to taxation appears to be a universal feeling, in which even the Asiatic forgets the divine right of sovereignty, and which throws us back on the pervading spirit of selfishness which [403] governs human nature. The
tamgha
,
or stamp tax, which preceded the
jizya
, would appear to have been as unsatisfactory as it was general, from the solemnity of its renunciation by Babur on the field of battle after the victory over infidels, which gave him the crown of India; and though we have no record of the jizya being its substitute, there are indications which authorize the inference.
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Rāna Amar Singh asserts Rājput Independence.
—Rana Amra was not an idle spectator of these occurrences; and although the spurious thirst for distinction so early broke up the alliance by detaching Ajit, he redoubled his efforts for personal independence, and with it that of the Rajput nation. An important document attests this solicitude, namely, a treaty
with the emperor, in which the second article stipulates emancipation from the galling
jizya.
It may be well to analyse this treaty, which attests the
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altered condition of both parties. Its very title marks the subordination of the chief of the Rajputs; but while this is headed a ‘Memorandum of Requests,’ the eighth article discloses the effective means of the Rana, for there he assumes an air of protection towards the emperor. In the opening stipulation for the
mansab
of 7000, the [404] mind reverts to the great Amra, who preferred abdication to acknowledgment of a superior; but opinion had undergone a change as great as the mutual relations of the Rajputs. In temporal dignities other States had risen to an equality with Mewar, and all had learned to look on the Mogul as the fountain of honour. The abolition of the jizya, freedom from religious restraint, control over the ancient feudatories of his house, and the restoration of all sequestrations, distinguish the other articles, and amply attest the improving attitude of Mewar, and the rapid decay of the Mogul empire. The Mahrattas under Raja Sahu
were successfully prosecuting their peculiar system in the south, with the same feelings which characterized the early Gothic invaders of Italy; strangers to settled government, they imposed the taxes of
chauth
and
desmukhi
,
the
fourth
and
tenth
of all territorial income, in the countries they overran. The Jat tribes west of the Chambal likewise bearded their oppressors in this reign, by hoisting the standard of independence at the very threshold of their capital; and from the siege of Sinsini (mentioned in this treaty) to the last storm of Bharatpur, they maintained the consequence thus assumed.
Death of Rāna Amar Singh.
—This treaty was the last act of Rana Amra’s life; he died in
A.D.
1716 [1710], leaving the reputation of an active and high-minded prince, who well upheld his station and the prosperity of his country, notwithstanding the anarchy of the period. His encouragement of agriculture and protection of manufactures are displayed in the edicts engraved on pillars, which will hand down his name to posterity. His memory is held in high veneration; nor do the Rajputs admit the absolute degradation of Mewar till the period of the second prince in succession to Amra [405].
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