Note 31 — CHAPTER 1
Reading edition
Domestic habits and national manners are painted to the life, and no man can well understand the Rajput of yore who does not read these. Those were the days of chivalry and romance, when the assembled princes contended for the hand of the fair, who chose her own lord, and threw to the object of her choice, in full court, the barmala, or garland of marriage. Those were the days which the Rajput yet loves to talk of, when the glance of an eye weighed with a sceptre: when three things alone occupied him: his horse, his lance, and his mistress; for she is but the third in his estimation, after all: to the two first he owed her.