Note 60 — CHAPTER 5

The ‘Daurayat’ or runners, the term applied to the bands who swept the country with their forays in those periods of general confusion, are analogous to the armed bands of the Middle Ages, who in a similar manner desolated Europe under the term routiers, tantamount to our rabars (on the road), the labars of the Pindaris in India. The Rajput Daurayat has as many epithets as the French routier, who were called escorcheurs, tard veneurs (of which class Gopaldas appears to have been), mille-diables, Guilleries, etc. From the Crusades to the sixteenth century, the nobles of Europe, of whom these bands were composed (like our Rajputs), abandoned themselves to this sort of life; who, to use the words of the historian, “préférèrent la vie vagabonde à laquelle ils s’étoient accoutumés dans le camp, à retourner cultiver leurs champs. C’est alors que se formèrent ces bandes qu’on vit parcourir le royaume et étendre sur toutes les provinces le fléau de leurs inclinations destructives, répandre partout l’effroi, la misère, le deuil et le désespoir; mettre les villes à contribution, piller et incendier les villages, égorger les laboureurs, et se livrer à des accès de cruauté qui font frémir” (Dict. de l’ancien régime et des abus féodaux, art. ‘Routier,’ p. 422).

We have this apology for the Rajput routiers, that the nobles of Europe had not; they were driven to it by perpetual aggressions of invaders. I invariably found that the reformed routier was one of the best subjects: it secured him from indolence, the parent of all Rajput vices.