1 enclosed in the mountains. This second experience of difficulties beyond his age and constitution, and the arrival of his sons, Azim and Akbar, determined him not to expose himself any longer in the field, but to leave its operations to their conduct, superintended by his own instructions from Ajmer, to which city he retired with the households of his family, the officers of his court, and his bodyguard of four thousand men, dividing the army between his two sons, who each had brought a considerable number of troops from their respective Governments. "1 Well may Colonel Tod exclaim: "But for repeated instances of an illjudged humanity, the throne of the Moghals might have been completely overturned."2 Twice owing to political indiscretion on the part of the Ranas of Mewar, in the reigns of Akbar and Jehangir, did the Hindus lose their chance of supremacy. Were it not for the ill-fated interview between Rana Pratap and Maun Singh of Jaipur on the Udaisagar lake, on the latter's return home from the conquest of Sholapur, Akbar would never have succeeded in consolidating his power and founding the Moghal Empire in India, which, after a brilliant career of two centuries, was finally shattered to pieces by the Mahrattas. Tod's Rajasthan, Vol. I., p. 383. 2Tod's Rajasthan, Vol. I., p. 379. 3 3 To him Akbar was indebted for half his triumphs, from the snow-clad Caucasus to the shores of the 'golden Chersonese.' Let the eye embrace those extremes of his conquests, Kabul and the Paromamisan of Alexander, and Arracan (now well-known) on the Indian Ocean; the former reunited, the latter subjugated, to the empire by a Rajput prince and a Rajput army," p. 336. "Prince Selim (afterwards Jehangir) led the war against Rana Pratap guided by the councils of Raja Maun and the distinguished apostate son of Sagurji, Mohabat Khan Vol. I. p 337. Again, when during Jehangir's reign, Mewar conceived the idea of putting up Prince Khurram against the Emperor Jehangir, and, in the Civil War, to wrest the supremacy for the Hindus, Bheem's indiscreet taunt to Raja Gaj Singh of Marwar at the critical moment alienated the Rahtores, and the design was frustrated. VI.-PATRIOTISM. Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land! -SCOTT: Lay of the Last Minstrel, LOVE of one's own country is inborn in all civilized men. Mátra Bhúmi-Motherland-was the constant refrain of the Hindus' song. The intensity of the feeling may be gauged from the fact that when during his fall, political foresight became a waning substance in the mental horizon of the Hindu, he ruled that no one should go out of the sacred limits of this holyland, that life here and death here alone shall be the necessary conditions of gaining Heaven hereafter. It is of course universally known that the creed of the Rajput or the warrior caste of India even now is, that dying sword in hand in the cause of the country is the surest and the nearest way to Indra's abode. Colonel Tod says: "The name of 'country' carried with it a magical power in the mind of the Rajput. The name of his wife or his mistress must never be mentioned at all, nor that of his country but with respect, or his sword is instantly unsheathed." Patriotism! In vain you ransack the annals of Greece and Rome, of Modern or Mediaval Europe to find such noble patriots as Rana Pratap and Thakur Durga Das. Patriotism, chivalry and honour found their ideal embodiment in these two heroes. Pratap fought single-handed, with a handful of his Rajputs, against the 1Tod's Rajasthan, Volume H, p. 429, |