bits, whose loin-cloth was five
hundred feet long, and whose spear was beyond the power of mortal man to
lift, took Chitor from "Man Singh, the Mori Prince," and wrote the first
chapter of the history of Mewar, which he received ready-made from Man
Singh who, if the chronicles speak sooth, was his uncle. Many and very
marvellous legends cluster round the name of Bappa Rawul; and he is said
to have ended his days far away from India, in Khorasan, where he
married an unlimited number of the Daughters of Heth, and was the father
of all the Nowshera Pathans. Some who have wandered, by the sign-posts
of inscription, into the fogs of old time, aver that, two centuries
before Bappa Rawul took Chitor the Mori division of the Pramar Rajputs,
who are the ruling family of Mewar, had found a hold in Bhilwara, and
for four centuries before that time had ruled in Kathiawar; and had
royally sacked and slain, and been sacked and slain in turn. But these
things are for the curious and the scholar, and not for the reader who
reads lightly. Nine princes succeeded Bappa, between 728 and 1068 A.D.,
and among these was one Alluji, who built a Jain tower upon the brow of
the hill, for in those days, though the Sun was worshipped, men were all
Jains.

And here they lived and sallied into the plains, and fought and
increased the borders of their kingdom, or were suddenly and stealthily
murdered, or stood shoulder to shoulder against the incursions of the
"Devil men" from the north. In 1150 A.D. was born Samar Singh, and he
married into the family of Prithi Raj, the last Hindu Emperor of Delhi,
who was at feud, in regard to a succession question, with the Prince of
Kanauj. In the war that followed, Kanauj, being hard pressed by Prithi
Raj, and Samar Singh, called Shahabuddin Ghori to his aid. At first,
Samar Singh and Prithi Raj broke the army of the Northern somewhere in
the lower Punjab, but two years later Shahabuddin came again, and, after
three days' fighting on the banks of the Kaggar, slew Samar Singh,
captured and murdered Prithi Raj, and sacked Delhi and Amber, while
Samar Singh's favourite queen became _sati_ at Chitor. But another wife,
a princess of Patun, kept her life, and when Shahabuddin sent down
Kutbuddin to waste her lands, led the Rajput army, in person, from
Chitor, and defeated Kutbuddin.

Then followed confusion, through eleven turbulent reigns that the
annalist has failed to unravel. Once in the years between 1193 and th