8 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTKAL INDIA. 



clans of Eajasthan to retain, like the Celtic chieftains of our 

 own country, family bards, whose duty it is to record in 

 a genealogical volume, and recite on great occasions, the 

 descent and family history of their patrons. The bardic 

 office is hereditary, and where the lineage of the family is 

 really ancient the bard is generally also a descendant of 

 the bards of the original clan. Often he is the chief bard 

 of the clan itself, and resides with its hereditary head at 

 the family seat in Eajasthan, visiting at intervals the cadet 

 branches of the house to record their domestic events. In 

 G6ndwana* numerous chiefs now exist who claim either a pure 

 descent from Edjpiit houses, or more frequently admit their 

 remote origin to have sprung from a union between some 

 Eajpiit adventurer of noble blood and one of the daughters of 

 the aborigines. Few of them are admitted to be pure Eajpiits 

 by the blue-blooded chiefs of Eajasthan ; but all have their 

 bards and genealogies. These, like such documents in all 

 countries, often go back to fabulous times, and are overlaid 

 with modern fiction ; but the legendary portion of the bardic 

 chronicle can generally be separated with little difficulty from 

 a solid residue of probable fact. 



The general conclusion to be drawn from the evidence of 

 these writings, supported as they are by tradition and later 

 history, is that during the 1 4th and 1 5th centuries, and it may 

 be even earlier, a great immigration of the Eajpiit clans took 

 place into the country of the aborigines. The Mahomedan 

 invaders of Upper India were then pressing hard on the 

 country between the Ganges and the Narbada rivers occupied 

 by the Eajpiits ; and it was doubtless the recoil from them that 

 forced these colonies of Eajpiits southwards into the wilds 

 of Central India. Here it would seem that they generally 

 formed matrimonial alliances with the indigenous tribes. 



