148 Captain Tod's Comments on a Sanscrit Inscription. 



Their names, their pedigrees, and their actions, are all touched on occa- 

 sionally ; nor is there a high family of Rdjwdrd, who cannot point out his 

 ancestors in these volumes. The Rt'ijput of the present day, or at least he 

 who has not mixed much with the faithful, has lost none of the feelings of 

 admiration for these actions. When this is the case, it is no longer a 

 question if he could imitate them. 



Six invasions by Shahabuddin occurred ere he succeeded. He had 

 been often defeated, and twice taken prisoner, by the Hindu sovereign 

 of Delhi, who, with all the lofty and blind arrogance of the Edjput 

 character, set him at liberty. Chand records the terms of release, and the 

 treaties concluded. But Pkithwiraja lost the chief of his warriors in the 

 plains of Canawajja. Sixty- four of the hundred and eight Stimants were left 

 dead, in different stages of a succession of battles, which continued from 

 the scene of enlevement to his own frontier. Each chief had the select of 

 his clan : for he carried her off in disguise, entering the court of her father, 

 and witnessing all the nuptial preparations in the halls of Canawajja, as the 

 attendant of his bard Chand. Pkithwiraja, on his return, became a slave 

 to the fair, and neglected his government. Shahabuddin invaded him 

 unprepared, and had reached the plains of the Penjdb, ere he would rouse 

 himself from his voluptuous sloth ; and the Sultan might have approached 

 his capital, but for his brother-in-law, SamarasI of Chi tor, who came to his 

 aid, and gave up his life, and thirteen thousand of his kin and clan, in his 

 defence. The last general battle was fought on the Kaggar river. The 

 inferior forces of Prithwiraja, after three days' incessant fighting, were 

 cut to pieces, he himself made prisoner, and carried to Gliizni. Thither the 

 bard, like Blondel in pursuit of Richard, followed his royal master, but it 

 was to die with him. He tells us, that they tried to prevent his finding his 

 sovereign ; but " the music of his tongue overcame the resolves of the guar- 

 " dian of the prison." But ere he enters, he very artfully introduces the 

 royal captive, deprived of sight by the ferocious Patdn, lamenting, in a fair 

 strain of soliloquy, the fickleness of fortune, at the same time combining a 

 rapid review of his own follies, which produced this reverse. The subject 

 is good, and is magnificent in the original ; nor can the sternest Rdjpiit 

 hear it without emotion, for the Chuhdn sovereign is his model : and 

 indeed the last book, as it records only misfortunes, he is not fond of 

 reading. Prithwiraja and the bard perished by their own hands, after 

 causing the death of SHAHASUDofN. 



