Rajasthan

“ The roll-call ended, a veteran with a jeweled aigrette in his turban stood apart from the rest with his back toward the dais steps and made a speech that was received in silence, though the women peering through the panel, fluttered with excitement, and the deep breathing in the durbar hall sounded like the very far-off murmur of a tide. For he rang the changes on the ancient chivalry of Rajasthan, and on the sanctity of ancient custom, and the right they had to follow what their hearts accounted good. ”

“ Negotiations were, therefore, initiated for the formation of a greater Rajasthan Union, which would both satisfy the sentimental aspirations of the people in certain areas, and facilitate the solution of economic and other problems common to all these States. As a result of these negotiations, a fresh Covenant (Appendix XL) was signed providing for the integration of the three major States of Rajputana, viz., Jaipur, Jodhpur and Bikaner and the State of Jaisalmer with the former Rajasthan Union to form the United State of Rajasthan. ”

“ And if the women of Amber can sometimes use their tongues, the men of Amber can oftener use their lances."
"Why, that is well said, Rajput lady, and Akbar will never deny what Rajputs have done for the Empire. But let us know the real price of this bracelet, good dame. The fair witches of Rajasthan are ever stealing our hearts; spare our purses, fair one."
"The palace is well guarded, sire," replied the witty Rajputanee with the same assumed modesty, "and there is little risk of thefts either by witches or by wizards. ”

“ Whereas by a Covenant entered into by the Rulers of Banswara, Bundi, Dungarpur, Jhalawar, Kishengarh, Kotah, Mewar, Partabgarh, Shahpura and Tonk it has been agreed that the territories of the said ten States should be integrated into one State by the name of the United State of Rajasthan ”

“ Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, by Lieutenant-Colonel James Tod, edited by William Crooke. 3 vols. Oxford University Press. London: Milford. Tod’s Rajasthan has long been established in the estimation of all qualified judges and in the affections of all Anglo-Indians as one of the few great classics produced since the establishment of British supremacy in India. And this position it will not easily lose in spite of its deficiencies from the point of view of modern scholarship. These can be made good, and are made good, in the present edition by Mr. ”

“ Notwithstanding anything contained in the original Covenant, the Constitution of India shortly to be adopted by the Constituent Assembly of India, shall be the Constitution for the United State of Rajasthan, and shall be enforced as such in accordance with the tenor of its provisions. ”

“ And whereas, in the best interests of the State of Rajasthan, which is closely linked with the rest of India by a community of interests in the economic, political and other fields, it is desirable that the constitutional relationship established between this state and the Dominion of India, should not only be continued as between this state and the contemplated Union of India but further strengthened, and the Constitution of India as drafted by the Constituent Assembly of India, which includes duly appointed representatives of this State, provides a suitable basis for doing so ”

“ But that reminds me, Prithwi Raj, of thy new Ballad of Pratap Singh, which made so much noise in Court, and which the great Akbar himself deigned to hear."
"Little noise can my verses make, Norendra, for I am not one of those inspired who are gifted with the gift of song. I write verses because they please me, and my Royal Master loves to encourage me with his kind approbation."
"Nay, thou speakest too lightly of thy gifts, Prince. Both in Agra and in Rajasthan have I heard thee named as one of the gifted."
"Trust not what the people say. When a Prince composes they will always admire. ”

“ So the Sesodias came to their own again, and the successors of Hamir extended their kingdoms and rebuilt Chitor, as kings know how to rebuild cities in a land where human labour and life are cheaper than bread and water. For two centuries, saith Tod, Mewar flourished exceedingly and was the paramount kingdom of all Rajasthan. Greatest of all the successors of Hamir, was Kumbha Rana who, when the Ghilzai dynasty was rotting away and Viceroys declared themselves kings, met, defeated, took captive, and released without ransom, Mahmoud of Malwa. ”

“ RAJASTHANI (properly Rājasthānī, the language of Rājasthān of Rajputana) , an Indo-Aryan vernacular closely related to Gujarati (q.v.) . It is spoken in Rajputana and the adjoining parts of central India, and has several dialects the principal of which are Jaipurī, Mārwāṛī, Mēwātī and Mālvī. Hāṛauṭī, an important variety of Jaipurī, is spoken in the states of Kota and Bundi. Carey, the well-known Serampur missionary, paid great attention to Rajasthani in the early part of the 19th century, translating the New Testament into no fewer than six dialects, viz. ”

“ Dost tell me this tinsel bracelet is worth thirty pieces of gold? I should scarcely value it at ten. And Amber bracelets are cheaper now, my dear, after peace has been concluded in Rajasthan."
"Peace didst thou say, great Queen? A river of blood flows between Amber and Mewar which no peace will bridge over for long; wait till Raja Man Singh returns from Bengal. And real Amber enamelled work sells not so cheap as modern tinsel work—may be thou hast seen no better than cheap jewellery. Go to some other stall, fair Queen, thou mayst find wares suited to thy purse." ”

“ They are of one race, and claim to be the issue of a Rajput king--Prithi Raj, I believe--by a Meena woman,--a mythical ancestry suggested no doubt by Brahmans in order to raise their social standing among other Hindus. They are really the descendants of the aboriginal tribes of Rajputana, but in course of time, through intercourse with Rajput Thakurs as servants, cultivators, and irregular levies, they have imbibed a certain amount of Rajput blood. They are a democratic crowd, and have never owed allegiance to the princes of Rajasthan. ”

“ If the story of a man's entrance into the palace Zenana was known and talked about there, Noren's life was not safe in Rajasthan or in Bengal. "Go on!" he cried in a low, hoarse voice.
"The Eastern Chief," went on the boy, with the same imperturbable coolness, "had a noble face, Master, and a true heart, and he held Jelekha kindly and spoke to her tenderly. But the Persian lady is a great magician, and can read into the hearts of spirits and of men. And she said to the Eastern Chief that he was a true soldier and a true lover, but his heart was in the Far East." ”

“ Internal Customs Barriers.—With the integration of States into Unions customs barriers as between the integrating States were abolished. In Rajasthan and Madhya Bharat after the abolition of the barriers within the Unions steps were taken to introduce uniform rates of duties leviable on the frontiers of the Unions. ”

“ To the west it spread into Rajputana, till its progress was stopped by the Indian desert, and in Rajputana another intermediate language took rise and became Rajasthani. As elsewhere explained, the language-wave of the Midland exercised less and less influence as it travelled farther from its home, so that, while in eastern Rajputana the local dialect is now almost a pure midland speech, in the west there are many evident traces of the old outer language still surviving. ”

“ Pashtu is the common language in Peshawar, Kohat, and Bannu, and is spoken on the western frontiers of Hazara and Dera Ismail Khan, and in the independent tribal territory in the west between the districts of the N.W.F. Province and the Durand Line and immediately adjoining the Peshawar district on the north. Rajasthani is a collective name for the dialects of Rajputana, which overflow into the Panjab, occupying a strip along the southern frontier from Bahawalpur to Gurgaon. ”

“ Vocabulary.—The vocabulary of both Gujarat and Rajasthani is very free from tatsama words. The great mass of both vocabularies is tadbhava (see Indo-Aryan Languages) . Rajputana was from an early period brought into close contact with the Mogul court at Agra and Delhi, and even in the 13th century A.D. official documents of the Rajput princes contained many borrowed Persian and Arabic words. Gujarati, under the influence of the learned Nāgara Brahmans, has perhaps more tatsama words than Rajasthani, but their employment is not excessive. ”

“ He commanded the escort attached to the resident with Sindia from 1812 to 1817. In the latter year he was in charge of the Intelligence Department which largely contributed to break up the confederacy of Maratha chiefs in the Pindari War, and was of great assistance in the campaign in Rajputana. In 1818 he was appointed political agent for the states of western Rajputana, where he conciliated the chieftains, settled their mutual feuds and collected materials for his Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan (2 vols., 1829–1832) . ”

“ The western (Mārwāṛī) spoken in Marwar and its neighbourhood, and the east-central (Jaipurī) spoken in Jaipur and its neighbourhood, may be taken as the typical Rajasthani dialects. In the following paragraphs we shall therefore confine ourselves to Gujarati, Marwari and Jaipuri.
We know more about the ancient history of Gujarati than we do about that of any other Indo-Aryan language. ”

“ We ought not to forget that Bengal, Madras, Bombay and the Punjab are all dominated by one great central culture. The epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata are epics of not only the Punjab, of Bombay, of Madras but also of Bengal and the rest of India. The great religious institutions are common—I am speaking of the Hindus only—to all the provinces, Each province has got a speciality of its own, I admit, but over and above that all these different provinces are bound together in one common culture. ”

“ The Jaipur Residency had come to seem almost like home. And the magnet of home drew all that was Eastern in Roy. It was the British blood in his veins that drove him afield. Though India was his objective, England was the impelling force. His true home seemed hundreds of miles away, in more senses than one. His union with Rajputana—set with the seal of that sacred and beautiful experience at Chitor—seemed, in his present mood, the more vital of the two.
And there was Lance up in the Punjab—a magnet as strong as any, when the masculine element prevailed. ”

“ North-West Provinces (46,905) , a province and lieutenant-governorship of British India, embraces the upper portion of the Ganges Valley and Doab, and reaches from Bengal to the Punjab, enclosing Oudh on all sides but the N.; area twice that of England, is the chief wheat province, and also raises opium, cotton, tea, and sugar; was separated from Bengal in 1835, and with it in 1877 was conjoined Oudh; Allahabad is the capital. ”

“ Those of us who know Northern India have memories of many such a sojourn in the enchanted no-man's-land of a Punjâb river-bed, where the soil on which the tent is pitched one year may be deep stream the next, and the great solemn cranes stalk amongst the young green wheat, and the flocks of flamingoes show rosy-red in the sunrises. ”

“ There is a faquir's establishment on the top, and the view on either side is very fine. That looking down over the plain past Rijaori and Nowshera—over the several wave-like lines of inferior hills into the plains of the Punjab of limitless extent, lost only in vapour and distance—is grand from its great extent, and beautiful in its varied features as in its colouring.
The other side presents the masses of the Pir Panjal, covered with snow. This range is of bold massive proportions, and affords the traveller a truly sublime picture of mountain scenery. ”

“ The consequence is that the existing population is very diverse, and is made up of elements belonging to many parts of India. The people of the northern Districts came from Bundelkhand and the Gangetic plain, and here are found the principal castes of the United Provinces and the Punjab. The western end of the Nerbudda valley and Betūl were colonised from Mālwa and Central India. Berār and the Nāgpur plain fell to the Marāthas, and one of the most important Marātha States, the Bhonsla kingdom, had its capital at Nāgpur. ”

“ But what of the roads on which the Doctor never passes? From Vellore's fortress-crowned hills they stretch north and south, east and west, and toward all the intermediate points of the compass. Every city of India forms such a nucleus for the country around. Amid the wheat fields of the Punjab, under the tamarinds of the Ganges plain, among the lotus pools and bamboo clusters of the Bengal deltas, and on the black cotton fields of the Deccan are the roads and the villages, the villages and the roads. ”

“ Tradition, however, is probably wrong, and the princess was from Jaipur and a true Mussulwoman.
From every height—and particularly from the Panch Mahal's roof—one sees immense prospects and realises what a landmark the stronghold of Fatehpur-Sikri must have been to the dwellers in the plains; but no view is the equal of that which bursts on the astonished eyes at the great north gateway, where all Rajputana is at one's feet. ”

“ The Punjab may be divided into four great natural divisions: the Himalayan tract, the submontane tract, the eastern and Natural Divisions. western plains and the Salt range tract, which have characteristics widely different from each other. The Himalayan tract, which includes the Punjab hill states, consists of 20,000 sq. m. of sparsely inhabited mountain, with tiny hamlets perched on the hill-sides or nestling in the valleys. The people consist chiefly of Rajputs, Kanets, Ghiraths, Brahmans and Dagis or menials. ”

“ Rivers.—With the exception of the Kunhar river, which flows down the Kagan valley to the Jhelum, the whole drainage of the province eventually finds its way into the Indus. The Indus enters the province between tribal territory and Hazara district. After leaving Hazara it flows in a southerly direction between the Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province, till it enters Mianwali district of the Punjab, from which it emerges to form again the eastern boundary of the province. ”