Note 7 — Rājpūt, Rāthor

In 1614 Rāna Amar Singh, recognising that further opposition was hopeless, made his submission to the emperor, on the condition that he should never have to present himself in person but might send his two sons in his place. This stipulation being accepted, the heir-apparent Karan Singh proceeded to Ajmer where he was magnanimously treated by Jahāngīr and shortly afterwards the imperial troops were withdrawn from Chitor. It is the pride of the Udaipur house that it never gave a daughter in marriage to any of the Musalmān emperors, and for many years ceased to intermarry with other Rājpūt families who had formed such alliances. But Amar Singh II. (1698–1710) made a league with the Mahārājas of Jodhpur and Jaipur for mutual protection against the Muhammadans; and it was one of the conditions of the compact that the latter chiefs should regain the privilege of marriage with the Udaipur family which had been suspended since they had given daughters in marriage to the emperors. But the Rāna unfortunately added a proviso that the son of an Udaipur princess should succeed to the Jodhpur or Jaipur States in preference to any elder son by another mother. The quarrels to which this stipulation gave rise led to the conquest of the country by the Marāthas, at whose hands Mewār suffered more cruel devastation than it had ever been subjected to by the Muhammadans. Ruinous war also ensued between Jodhpur and Jaipur for the hand of the famous Udaipur princess Kishen Kumāri at the time when Rājputāna was being devastated by the Marāthas and Pindāris; and the quarrel was only settled by the voluntary death of the object of contention, who, after the kinsman sent to slay her had recoiled before her young beauty and innocence, willingly drank the draught of opium four times administered before the fatal result could be produced.7