AMONG THE RAJPUTS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 10409, 22 March 1910, Page 6

AMONG THE RAJPUTS.

(By J. Ramsay Macdonald, 11.P., in the London Chronicle.) North from Baroda the country be:omes a great grassy plain, very much ike the South African veldt, particuarly between the Modder River and Vlagersfontein. The men change. They , jecome more jaunty in their carriage. They part their beards in the middle, mu comb back the sides to their ears. They carry ancient guns and old-world icimitars. When the sun sinks ill the svening a thousand herds of cattle wanler home over innumerable tracks converging on tile villages. This is Rajputana, tlie home of proud warriors and brave women. Baroda, with, a smile, says, "I am modern"; Rajputana, with a haughty miff, says, "I keep the old ways." Commerce arid politics have both invaded parts of it; some of its chiefs hanker after English Philistinism. But these degeneracies are still exceptions. The first Rajput chief I met, the well-known Sir Pertab Singh, of whom so many romantic tales are told, was deploring the fact that the hand of age was upon him, that there was 110 chance of another war, and that the probability therefore was that he would have to die on a bed. Pax Britannica was nothing to him except an evidence that the Golden Age had passed. He was praying to be allowed to lead his polo team against Bengal politicians, and was promising to do the necessary damage with the mallets off the sticks. Two or three days under the same roof as Sir Pertab made me understand his spirit of Cliitor. Whoever comes to India rind does not sit down on the plain below Cliitor with a history at his elbow and a plan on his lap, and then go up the hill—on an elepjiant if possible —to the ruined temples, palaces, bazaars, tanks, and the still almost perfect towers, might as well have stayed at home. My friends are dinning it into my ears that there is ho India. Ido not know, but Cliitor gives mie something to go upon. Round these walls tradition has woven most sacred garlands. Wending one's way up the long zig-zag road, which is flanked all along by massive walls and spanned every now and again by a drowning gate, one may still imagine that he hears the tramp of the Rajput cavalry going out to die, and it is easy to translate the hum of voices and other sounds which come down and go up from the villages at the top and bottom of the hill as the bridal song of the women going to their awful death by fire in the cavern of the palace rather than become prisoners in tlie hands of the Moguls. The whole place is a vast temple of chivalry. Through these narrow lanes and over these ruined heaps one should go bare of head and foot. The sun set whilst we lingered there. Suddenly -the land was filled with the beating" of tom-toms; lights flickered from the temples; the hum of prayers rose on every hand; queer forms moved in the gathering gloom. The spell of the Mighty Past fell upon us. At Cliitor the past is dead, and only comes from its grave at nightfall. But not far off, in tlie new capital of the State, Udaipur, the Old Time still lives in the light of day. The' railway stops far out from the confines of TJdaipur as an unclean stops at tho threshold of a temple, and you have to drive a mile or so to get to the city. Towering over the city are great white palaces and- temple domes. Tlie hills around are capped by palaces and forts, and temples. Holy men wander unkempt, asli covered, almost naked, in its streets, or sit beneath its trees contemplating the Eeternal and the allcomprehending Void. Hardly had we arrived when we were told that a religious procession had started from the palace. Then they came blowing horns, beating drums and cymbals, on foot, on horses, on elephants. the Maliarana under a golden umbrella near the rear. The rains were over, and the time had come when the chiefs gathered around their ruler and prepared to go out with him to give battle. But before they went they had to propitiate the gods. Therefore a holy man came and sat for ten days in a temple without food or sleep, holding a sword on his knees, and every evening before sunset the Malmrana and his warriors went to do homage before him. They used to chant sacred songs and recite sacred verses 011 the way. That was the procession we saw. The sword of a long dead ancestor had been sent from the palace the day before, and- the Yogi sat with it- in the temple as though peace had been declared, and as though other sounds than those of reaping still followed the rains. Next morning the Maliarana sent for us. Inside the palace all was Oriental bustle. Camels, horses, fowls, elephants wandered in tlie courtyards, the white walls of which simply flared with purity in the sun. A perfect maze of moving humanity, from whining babes to the decrepid aged moved about. Suitors with their petitions sat at the doorways, soldiers paced up and down in the arches with swords 011 their thighs, scribes and other coifrtiers lounged against pillars, and stretched themselves on marble benches. Through endless passages, up innumerable stairs we were taken, and at length were ushered into the presence of a small, keen-eyed, grey-bearded, dignified man. He explained'that he had been busy with his devotions. He toyed with a sword which lay across his knees. We were back in the Middle Ages in the presence of a man whose greatest boast was that no Muslim blood ever tainted his own, and that lie had been true to the Rajput motto, "He who keeps the faith is preserved by God." He stood for the old ways, he told us. When he goes out into his domain 3000 retainers follow him. He sacrifices every morning to his gods; he sits on his judgment seat and hears the petitions of his people; he keeps his sword arm strong and cra'ftv by hewing at clay images. Even his clocks decline to bow the knee to Calcutta, as liis ancestors declined to accept the yoke of the Mogul—so he lives half an hour behind the official time. ~ I do not- know to what enormities of heathendom I committed myself, but I said it was well that the old should not die. He smiled approvingly, murmured that some of his chiefs were not so faithful as himself, shifted his sword, held out his hand, and we returned through the courtiers, the soldiers, and the suitors into the noisy and the crowded courtyards far below. In the evening we sat 011 the verandah of the Guest House, upon a liill commanding wide views over hill and plain, watching the sun set and listening to an old man tell of the Rajput heroes and the Rajput battles. And when the pinks and yellows had deepened into 11 igift, the tales were broken by the crunching of horse's feet on the gravel. After all, we were of- the West and in the garb of the West we had to go out and dine with the representative of the British Raj in this oldword State.