184 1 .J inscription froin the neighbourhood of Mount Aboo. 82 1 1 



principality by force of arms, after the temporary disruption of the 

 monarchy at Chitore by the Mussulman invaders. The justice of this 

 opinion is confirmed by the tenor of the Dhavala inscription now 

 before us. Enough of it remains to give us evidence of the existence 

 contemporaneously within the boundary of the ancient monarchies of 

 Chitore and Odeypore of another petty state, whose princes we now, 

 only have for the first time heard of in this obscure record of their acts, 

 and whose territory may be perhaps yet, faintly remembered by some 

 local appellation, or traditional record. The inference is natural, that 

 similar mementos of other petty states established by the swofd about 

 the same period, during the time of political confusion may be still extant 

 in Mey war. Their discovery would of course afford further proof of 

 the truth of our suppositions as to the state of great part of Rajpoo- 

 tana, for two hundred years or more after the first Mussulman in- 

 vasion. 



Enquiry into such monuments of antiquity, however slow, and how- 

 ever desultory, has yet the advantage of adding something to the 

 amount of our knowledge of the true history of India. Materials are 

 gradually accumulating, whence in the course of time, a sound and 

 rational account may be framed of men and things as they at various 

 times have been in this vast country. From the inscription before us, 

 meagre and mutilated as it is, we are able to find evidence of hosti- 

 lities carried on at this period against the Jains, on the ground of reli- 

 gion, and noted in this record as an act of special merit. We are 

 empowered to conclude, that in Rajpootana, war and foreign invasion 

 had not as in other parts of India, (as evidenced by other inscriptions,) 

 caused the pursuits of literature to his neglected, the style and lan- 

 guage of the record being singularly good : the arts, as it appears by 

 the description of the temple, continued also to flourish, and the power of 

 the ruling prince was sufficiently well established to enable him to declare 

 the doctrine of possession in right of sovereignty of the produce of the 

 earth : " He who rules it in his turn, is the sole enjoyer of its fruits." 

 The amount of information thus acquired is often but small, and the 

 labour of attaining is heavy ; but of such, let it be remembered, is the 

 material of real history composed, and by such evidence alone are the 

 errors and misrepresentations of tradition exposed and corrected. 



ffl 



