RAJPUTS AND THE HISTORY OF RAJPUTANA. 



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have through many centuries been noted for their bodily 

 strength and for those qualities of mind which should 

 accompany such a state of health. Where they have failed 

 it has been due to want of union and good leaders and to 

 incapacity to adapt themselves to modern conditions, which 

 theii more quick-witted adversaries, under foreign influences, 

 have not been slow to understand and follow. The fact that 

 Rajputana is one of our best recruiting grounds proves thnt 

 mthe aterial is still one of the best, and, if properly led, 

 second to none in India. Most unfortunately the Rajput 

 despises the pen. though he feels and recognises its power, 

 which has often been exercised to his detriment ; but, where 

 physical force, bravery, and loyalty alone are required, he is 

 always to be depended upon, though he cannot easily realise 

 that personal courage, with faithful devotion to his liege lord, are 

 not sufficient to ensure Imperial rule in these days, in which 

 strategy and well considered plans must accompany diccipline, 

 and when force alone cannot rule the world. Many of my 

 Rajput friends, who despise the learning of the scholar and the 

 schools, which they associate to some extent with trickery and 

 with the possession of additional fangs to enable a man to prey 

 upon others, have bitterly regretted to me their powerlessness 

 to prove their loyalty by using their swords on behalf of the 

 paramount sovereign. It may be that this noble, if somewhat 

 mediaeval, spirit may yet some day be used for the good of the 

 empire. The Pax Britannica has, however, already converted 

 the Meenas and the Jhats, the strongest of the peasantry, as 

 well as many Rajputs, into ordinary citizens, who seem to have 

 forgotten the arts of war, though as yet, I fear, they have not 

 sufficiently so learned the arts of peace as to be able to defeat 

 the pleader, or astute petty lawyer, to whom all of them are 

 ready to fall a prey, or the baniya or small trader, from 

 whom they recklessly borrow, so that in many cases they lose to 

 the one or to the other their lands and fortunes. 



I think that I have shown that to some extent the progress, 

 ancient success, and present position of the Rajputs and their 

 sovereignties, have been due to the geographical, physical, and 

 climatic conditions of their country. I shall now therefore deal 

 with other important considerations. I repeat that the fact 

 that the same race has remained dominant, in what would 

 appear at first sight an unsatisfactory and unpropitious country 

 and environment, from the date of its first appearance there 

 fifteen hundred years ago, points to conditions which are indeed 

 worthy of the most careful study. Assuming that the ancestors 



