Note 25 — CHAPTER 18

It will fill up the picture of the times to relate the revenge. When Jamshid, the infamous lieutenant of the infamous Amir Khan, established his headquarters at Udaipur, which he daily devastated, Sardar Singh, then in power, was seized and confined as a hostage for the payment of thirty thousand rupees demanded of the Rana. The surviving brothers of the murdered minister Somji ‘purchased their foe’ with the sum demanded, and anticipated his clansmen, who were on the point of effecting his liberation. The same sun shone on the head of Sardar, which was placed as a signal of revenge over the gateway of Rampiyari’s palace. I had the anecdotes from the minister Siyahal, one of the actors in these tragedies, and a relative of the brothers, who were all swept away by the dagger. A similar fate often seemed to him, though a brave man, inevitable during these resumptions; which impression, added to the Rana’s known inconstancy of favour, robbed him of half his energies.