Annals of Mewar

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Vol I:Annals of Mewar

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Book IV Chapter 1

[p.247]: We now proceed to the history of the States of Rajputana, and shall commence with the Annals of Mewar, and its princes.

Titles of Mewar Chiefs : descent from the Sun

These are styled Ranas, and are the elder branch of the Suryavansi, or ' children of the sun.' Another patronymic is Raghuvansi, derived from a predecessor of Rama, the focal point of each scion of the solar race. To him, the conqueror of Lanka,¹ the genealogists endeavour to trace the solar lines. The titles of many of these claimants are disputed ; but the Hindu tribes yield unanimous suffrage to the prince of Mewar as the legitimate heir to the throne of Rama, and style him Hindua Suraj, or ' Sun of the Hindus.'² He is universally allowed to be the first of the ' thirty-six royal tribes ' ; nor has a doubt ever been raised respecting his purity of descent. Many of these tribes³ have been swept away by time ; and the genealogist, who abhors a vacuum in his mystic page, fills up their place with others, mere scions of some ancient but forgotten stem.

Stability of Mewar State

With the exception of Jaisalmer, Mewar is the only dynasty of these races³ which has outlived eight centuries of foreign domination, in the same lands where

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1 Said to be Ceylon ; an idea scouted by the Hindus, who transfer Lanka to a very distant region. [The latter is certainly not the common belief.]

2 This descendant of one hundred kings shows himself in cloudy weather from the surya-gaukhra, or ' balcony of the sun.'

3 See History of the Tribes.

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[p.248]: [212] conquest placed them. The Rana still possesses nearly the same extent of territory which his ancestors held when the conueror from Ghazni first crossed the 'blue waters'¹ of the Indus to invade India ; while the other families now ruling in the north- west of Rajasthan are the relics of ancient dynasties driven from their pristine seats of power, or their junior branches, who have erected their own fortunes. This circumstance adds to the dignity of the Ranas, and is the cause of the general homage which they receive, notwithstanding the diminution of their power. Though we cannot give the princes of Mewar an ancestor in the Persian Nushirwan, nor assert so confidently as Sir Thomas Roe his claims to descent from the celebrated Porus,² the opponent of Alexander, we can carry him into the regions of antiquity more remote than the Persian, and which would satisfy the most fastidious in respect to ancestry.

Origin of the Rajputs.

In every age and clime we observe the same eager desire after distinguished pedigree, proceeding from a feeling which, though often derided, is extremely natural. The Rajaputras are, however, scarcely satisfied with discriminating their ancestors from the herd of mankind. Some plume them- selves on a celestial origin, whilst others are content to be demi-celestial ; and those who cannot advance such lofty claims, rather than acknowledge the race to have originated in the ordinary course of nature, make their primeval parent of demoniac extraction ; accordingly, several of the dynasties who cannot obtain a niche amongst the children of the sun or moon, or trace their descent from some royal saint, are satisfied to be considered the offspring of some Titan (Dailya). These puerilities are of modern fabrication, in cases where family documents have been lost, or emigration has severed branches from the parent stock ;' who, increasing in power, but ignorant of their birth, have had recourse to fable to supply the void. Various authors, borrowing from the same source, have assigned the seat of Porus to the Rana's

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1. Nilab from nil, ' blue,' and ah, ' water ' ; hence the name of the Nile in Egypt and in India [?]. Sind, or Sindhu, appears to be a Scythian word :sin in the Tatar, t sin in Chinese, ' river.' [It is Sanskrit, meaning ' divider.'] Hence the inhabitants of its higher course termed it aba sin, ' parent stream ' ; and thus, very probably, Abyssinia was formed by"" the Arabians ; ' the country on the Nile,' or aba sin. [Abyssinia is ' land of the Habashi, or negroes.']

2. See p. 47 above.

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[p.249]: family ; and coincidence of name has been the cause of the family being alternately elevated and depressed. Thus the incidental circumstance of the word Rhamnae being found in Ptolemy's geography, in countries bordering on Mewar, furnishes our ablest geographers¹ with a reason [213] for planting the family there in the second century ; while the commentators² on the geography of the Arabian travellers of the ninth and tenth centuries ' discover sufficient evidence in " the kingdom of Rahmi, always at war with the Balhara sovereign," to consider him (not- withstanding Rahmi is expressly stated " not to be much considered for his birth or the antiquity of his kingdom ") as the prince of Chitor, celebrated in both these points.

The translator of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, following D'Anville,⁴ makes Ozene (Ujjain) the capital of a Porus,⁵ who sent an embassy to Augustus to regulate their commercial intercourse, and whom he asserts to be the ancestor of the Rana. But to show how guarded we should be in admitting verbal resemblance to decide such points, the title of Rana is of modern adoption, even so late as the twelfth century ; and was assumed in consequence of the victorious issue of a contest with the Parihara prince of Mandor, who bore the title of Rana, and who surrendered it with his life and capital to the prince of Mewar. The latter substituted it for the more ancient appellation of Rawal ;⁶ but it was not till the thirteenth century that the novel distinction was generally recognized by neighbouring powers. Although we

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1. D'Anville and Rennell. [The Rhamnae have been identified with the Brahui of Baluchistan (McCrindle, Ptolemy, 159). Lassen places them on the Nerbudda.]

2. Maurice and others.

3. Relations anciennes des voyageurs, par Renaudot.

4. D'Anville {Antiquites de l'Inde) quotes Nicolas of Damascus as his authority, who says the letter written by Porus, prince of Ozene, was in the Greek character.

5. This Porus is a corruption of Puar, once the most powerful and conspicuous tribe in India ; classically written Pramara, the dynasty which ruled at Ujjain for ages. [This is not certain (Smith, EHI, 60, note).]

6. Rawal, or Raul, is yet borne as a princely title by the Aharya prince of Dungarpur, and the Yadu prince of Jaisalmer, whose ancestors long ruled in the heart of Scythia. Raoul seems to have been titular to the Scandinavian chiefs of Scythic origin. The invader of Normandy was Raoul, corrupted to Rollon or Rollo. [The words, of course, have no connexion : Rawal, Skt. rajakula, ' royal family.']

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[p.250]: cannot for a moment admit the Rahmi, or even the Rhamnae of Ozene, to be connected with this family, yet Ptolemy appears to have given the real ancestor in his Baleokouroi, the Balhara monarchs of the Arabian travellers, the Valabhiraes of Saurashtra, who were the ancestors of the princes of Mewar.¹

Before we proceed, it is necessary to specify the sources whence materials were obtained for the Annals of Mewar, and to give some idea of the character they merit as historical data [214].

Sources of the History

For many years previous to sojourn- ing at the court of Udaipur, sketches were obtained of the genea- logy of the family from the rolls of the bards. To these was added a chronological sketch, drawn up under the eye of Raja Jai Singh of Amber, with comments of some value by him, and which served as a ground-work. Free access was also granted to the Rana's library, and permission obtained to make copies of such MSS. as related to his history. The most important of these was the Khuman Raesa,^ which is evidently a modern work founded upon ancient materials, tracing the genealogy to Rama, and halting at conspicuous beacons in this long line of crowned heads, particu- larly about the period of the Muhammadan irruption in the tenth century, the sack of Chitor by Alau-d-din in the thirteenth century, and the wars of Rana Partap with Akbar, during whose reign the work appears to have been recast.

The next in importance were the Rajvilas, in the Vraj Bhakha, by Man Kabeswara ; * and the Rajratnakar,* by Sudasheo Bhat : both written in the reign of Rana Raj Singh, the oj^ponent of Aurangzeb : also the Jaivilas, written in the reign of Jai Singh, son of Raj Singh. They all commence with the genealogies of the

^ The Balhara kings, and their capital Nahrwala, or Anhilwara Patan, have given rise to much conjecture amongst the learned. We shall, before this work is closed, endeavour to condense what has been said by ancient and modern authorities on the subject ; and from manuscripts, ancient inscriptions, and the result of a personal visit to this ancient domain, to set the matter completely at rest. [See p. 122 above.] [" Hippokoura, the royal seat of Baleo Kouros " {Periplus, vlii. 83). Baleo Kouros has been identified with Vilivayakura, a name found on coins of the Andhra dynasty (BO, i. Part ii. 158 ; McCrindle, Ptolemy, 179).]

^ Khuman is an ancient title of the earlier princes, and still used. It was borne by the son of Bappa, the founder, who retired to Transoxiana, and there ruled and died : the very country of the ancient Scythic Khomani.

'^ Lord of rhyme. * Sea of gems.

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SOURCES OF THE HISTORY: KANAKSEN 251

family, introductory to the military exploits of the princes whose names they bear.

The Mamadevi Prasistha is a copy of the inscriptions ^ in the temple of ' the Mother of the Gods ' at Kumbhalmer. Genea- logical rolls of some antiquity were obtained from the widow of an ancient family bard, who had left neither children nor kindred to follow his profession. Another roll was procured from a priest of the Jains residing in Sandrai, in Marwar, whose ancestry had enjoyed from time immemorial the title of Guru, which they held at the period of the sack of Valabhipura in the fifth century, whence they emigrated simultaneously with the Rana's ancestors. Others were obtained from Jain priests at Jawad in Malwa. Historical documents possessed by several chiefs were readily furnished, and extracts were made from works, both Sanskrit and Persian, which incidentally mention the family. To these were added traditions or biographical anecdotes furnished in con- versation by the Rana, or men of intellect amongst his chiefs [215], ministers, or bards, and inscriptions calculated to reconcile dates ; in short, every corroborating circumstance was treasured up which could be obtained by incessant research during sixteen years. The Commentaries of Babur and Jahangir, the Institutes of Akbar, original grants, public and autograph letters of the emperors of Delhi and their ministers, were made to contribute more or less ; yet, numerous as are the authorities cited, the result may afford but little gratification to the general reader, partly owing to the unpopularity of the subject, partly to the inartificial mode of treating it.

Kanaksen. — At least ten genealogical hsts, derived from the most opposite sources, agree in making Kanaksen the founder of this dynasty ; and assign his emigxation from the most northern of the provinces of India to the peninsula of Saurashtra in S. 201, or A.D. 145. We shall, therefore, make this the point of outset ; though it may be premised that Jai Singh, the royal historian and astronomer of Amber, connects the line with Sumitra (the fifty-sixth descendant from the deified Rama), who appears to have been the contemporary of Vikramaditya, a.c. 56.

The country of which Ayodhya (now Oudh) was the capital, and Rama monarch, is termed, in the geographical writings of the Hindus, Kosala ; doubtless from the mother of Rama, whose ^ Tiiese inscriptions will be described in the Personal Narrative.

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252 ANNALS OF MEWAR

name was Kausalya.^ The first royal emigrant from tlie north is styled, in the Rana's archives, Kosala-putra, ' son of Kosala.'

Titles of the Chiefs. — Rama had two sons, Lava and Kusa : from the former the Rana's family claim descent. He is stated to have built Lahore, the ancient Lohkot ; ^ and the branch from which the princes of Mewar are descended resided there until Kanaksen emigrated to Dwarka. The difficulty of tracing these races through a long period of years is greatly increased by the custom of changing the appellation of the tribe, from conquest, locality, or personal celebrity. Sen * seems to have been the martial termination for many generations : this was followed by Dit, or Aditya, a term for the ' sun.' The first change in the name of the tribe was on their expulsion from Saurashtra, when for the generic term of Suryavansi was substituted the particular appellation of Guhilot. This name was maintained till another event dispersed the family, and when they settled in [216] Ahar,* Aharya became the appellative of the branch. This continued till loss of territory and new acquisitions once more transferred the dynasty to Sesoda,* a temporary capital in the western moun- tains. The title of Ranawat, borne by all descendants of the blood royal since the eventful change which removed the seat of government from Chitor to Udaipur, might in time have super- seded that of Sesodia, if continued warfare had not checked the increase of population ; but the Guhilot branch of the Suryavansi still retain the name of Sesodia.

Having premised thus much, we must retrograde to the darker ages, through which we shall endeavour to conduct this celebrated dynasty, though the clue sometimes nearly escapes from our hands in these labyrinths of antiquity.® When it is recollected

^ [It is the other way : Kausalya took her name from Kosala.]

^ [See p. 116 above.]

' Sen, 'army'; kanak, 'gold.' [Kanaksen is entirely mythical. It has been suggested that the name is a reminiscence of the connexion of the great Kushan Emperor, Kanishka, with Gujarat and Kathiawar {BG, i. Part i. 101).]

• Ahar, or Ar, is in the valley of the present capital, Udaipur.

• The origin of this name is from the trivial occurrence of the expelled

prince of Chitor having erected a town to commemorate the spot, where after an extraordinarily hard chase he killed a hare {sasu).

• The wila fable which envelops or adorns the cradle of every illustrious

family is not easily disentangled. The bards weave the web with skiU, and it cUngs like ivy round each modern branch, obscuring the aged stem, in

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LEGEND OF KANAKSEN 253

to what violence this family has been subjected during the last eight centuries, often dispossessed of all but their native hills and compelled to live on their spontaneous produce, we could scarcely expect that historical records should be preserved. Chitor was thrice sacked and destroyed, and the existing records are formed from fragments, registers of births and marriages, or from the oral relations of the bards.

Legend of Kanaksen. — By what route Kanaksen, the first emigrant of the solar race, found his way into Saurashtra from Lohkot, is uncertam : he, however, wrested dominion from a prince of the Pramara race, and founded Birnagara in the second century (a.d. 144). Four generations afterwards, Vijayasen. whom the prince of Amber calls Nushirwan, founded Vijayapur, supposed to be where Dholka now stands, at the head of the Saurashtra peninsula.^ Vidarba was also founded by him, the name of which was afterwards changed to Sihor. But the most celebrated was the capital, Valabhipura, which for years baffled all search, till it was revealed in its now humbled condition as Walai, ten miles west [217] of Bhaunagar. The existence of this city was confirmed by a celebrated Jain work, the Satrunjaya Mahatma.^ The want of satisfactory proof of the Rana's emigra- tion from thence was obviated by the most unexpected discovery of an inscription of the twelfth century, in a ruined temple on the tableland forming the eastern boundary of the Rana'? present territory, which appeals to the ' walls of Valabhi ' for the truth of the action it records. And a work written to commemorate the reign of Rana Raj Singh opens with these words : "In the west is Sorathdes,^ a country well known : the barbarians invaded it, and conquered Bal-ka-nath ; * all fell in the sack of Valab- hipura, except the daughter of the Pramara." And the Sandrai

the time-worn branches of which monsters and demi-gods are perched, whose claims of affinity are held in high estimation by thesfe ' children of the sun,' who would deem it criminal to doubt that the loin-robe (dhoti) of their great founder, Bapa Rawal, was less than five hundred cubits in circum- ference, that his two-edged sword (khanda), the gift of the Hindu Proserpine, weighed an ounce less than sixty-four pounds, or that he was an inch under twenty feet in height.

^ [Vijayapur has been doubtfully identified with Bijapur in the Alima- dabad district (BG, i. Part i. 110).]

^ Presented to the Royal Asiatic Society of London.

• Sorath or Saurashtra. * The ' lord of Bal.'

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254 ANNALS OF MEWAR

roll thus commences : " When the city of Valabhi was sacked, the inhabitants fled and founded Bali, Sandrai, and Nadol in Mordar des." ^ These are towns yet of consequence, and in all the Jain religion is still naaintained, which was the chief worship of Valabhipura when sacked by the ' barbarian.' The records preserved by the Jains give s.b. 205 (a.d. 524) as the date of this event.^

The tract about Valabhipura and northward is termed Bal, probably from the tribe of Bala, which might have been the designation of the Rana's tribe prior to that of Grahilot ; and most probably Multan, and all these regions of the Kathi, Bala, etc., were dependent on Lohkot, whence emigrated Kanaksen ; thus strengthening the surmise of the Scythic descent of the Ranas, though now installed in the seat of Rama. The sun was the deity of this northern tribe, as of the Rana's ancestry, and the remains of numerous temples to this grand object of Scj'thic homage are still to be found scattered over the peninsula ; whence its name, Saurashtra, the coimtry of the Sauras, or Sun-worship- pers ; the Surastrene or Syrastrene of ancient geographers ; its inhabitants, the Suros (2t'/pwv) of Strabo.'

Besides these cities, the MSS. give Gayni * as the last refuge

^ Marwar.

^ [The date of the fall of Valabhi is very uncertain (Smith, EH I, 315, note). It is said to* have been destroyed in the reign of Siladitya VI., the last of the dynasty, about a.d. 776 (Duff, Chronology of India, 31, G7, 308).]

• [There is possibly a confusion with the Soras of Aehan (xv. 8) which

has been identified by Caldwell {Dravidian Grammar, 17) with the ^Qpat of Ptolemy, and with the Chola kingdom of Southern India. Surashtra or Saurashtra, ' land of the Sus,' was afterwards Sanskritized into ' goodly country ' (Monier Williams, Skt. Diet. s.v. ; BG, i. Part i. 6).]

• Gaini, or Gajni, is one of the ancient names of Cambay (the port of

Valabhipura), the ruins of which are about three miles from the modern city. Other sources indicate that these princes held possessions in the southern continent of India, as well as in the Saurashtra peninsula. Tala- talpur Patau, on the Godavari, is mentioned, which tradition asserts to be the city of Deogir ; but which, after many years' research, I discovered in Saurashtra, it being one of the ancient names of Kandala. In after times, when succeeding dynasties held the title of Balakarae, though the capital was removed inland to Anhilwara Patau, they still held possession of the western shore, and Cambay continued the chief port. [For the identifica- tion of Gajni with Cambay see I A, iv. 147 ; BG, vi. 213 note. The site of Devagiri has been identified with Daulatabad (BG, i. Part ii. 136 ; Beal, Buddhist Records of the Western World, ii. 255, note).]

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INVADERS OF SAURASHTRA 255

of the famUy [218] when expelled Saurashtra. One of the poetic chronicles thus commences : " The barbarians had captured Gajni. The house of Siladitya was left desolate. In its defence his heroes fell ; of his seed but the name remained."

Invaders of Saurashtra. — These invaders were Scythic, and in all probability a colony from the Parthian kingdom, which was established in sovereignty on the Indus in the second century, having their capital at Saminagara, where the ancient Yadu ruled for ages : the Minnagara ^ of Arrian, and the Mankir of the Arabian geographers. It was by this route, through the eastern portion of the valley of the Indus, that the various hordes of Getae or Jats, Huns, Kamari, Kathi, Makwahana, Bala and Aswaria, had peopled this peninsula, leaving traces still visible. The period is also remarkable when these and other Scythic hordes were simultaneously abandoning higher Asia for the cold regions

^ The position of Minnagara has occupied the attention of geographers from D'Anville to Pottinger. Sind being conquered by Omar, general of the caUph Al-Mansur (Abbasi), the name of Minagara was changed to Mansura, " une ville celcbre sur le rivage droit du Sind ou Mehran." " Ptole- mee fait aussi mention de cette ville ; mais en la depla9ant," etc. D'Anville places it about 26°, but not so high as Ulug Beg, whose tables make it 26° 40'. I have said elsewhere that I had little doubt that Minnagara, handed down to us by the author of the Periplus as the ^uerpoTroXis t^s ^Kvdias, was the Saminagara of the Yadu Jarejas, whose chronicles claim Seistan as their ancient possession, and in all probability was the stronghold {nagara) of Sambos, the opponent of Alexander. On every consideration, I am inchned to place it on the site of Sehwan. The learned Vincent, in his translation of the Peripbis, enters fully and with great judgment upon this point, citing every authority, Arrian, Ptolemy, Al-Biruni, Edrisi, D'Anville, and De la Rochette. He has a note (26, p. 386, vol. i.) which is conclusive, could he have applied it : " Al-Birun [equi-distant] between Debeil and Mansura." D'Anville also says : " de Mansora a la ville nommee Birun, la distance est indiquee de quinze parasanges dans Abulfeda," who fixes it, on the authority of Abu-Rehan (.surnamed Al-Biruni from his birthplace), at 26° 40'. The ancient name of Haidarabad, the present capital of Sind, was Nerun (^ j »*i ; ) or Nirun, and is almost equi-distant, as Abulfeda says, between Debal (Dewal or Tatta) and Mansura, Sehwan, or Minnagara, the latitude of which, accord- ing to my construction, is 26° 11'. Those who wish to pursue this may examine the Eclaircisfiemens sur la Carle de Vlnde, p. 37 et seq., and Dr. Vincent's estimable translation, p. 386. [The site of Minnagara, like those of all the cities in the delta of the Indus, owing to changes in the course of the river, is very uncertain. Jhajhpur or Mungrapur has been suggested (McCrindle, Ptolemy, 72, Periplus, 1086 f.). Nirun has been identified with Helai, a little below Jarak, on the high road from Tatta to Haidarabad (EHiot-Dowson i. 400).]