Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c47.s2.15

v4.c47.s2.15

Meantime, his Pāsbāni had been murdered by the nobles, on 16th April, 1792, but the fact was kept from him till a week before his own death. The account of the crime that reached the camp of Holkar at Tonk in the Jaipur State runs thus: "Raja Bijay Singh was entirely under the influence of his kept woman and at her request seated his grandson in her lap and declared him (the future) king. So all the Rajputs united and decided not to salute one who had been adopted as a son by a concubine. They gave the throne to another grandson of the king, named Bhim Singh, who had been confined in Jodhpur citadel. Bhim Singh's rule was proclaimed through the capital. The king's concubine, there called the Pāsbānin, was living in a garden outside the city with her own body-guard of a thousand or twelve hundred soldiers. The Rajputs asked them to take their due pay (from the barons) and leave her. They refused. So there was a fight between them, some ten or twelve men fell on the two sides taken together, and at last the soldiers agreed to go away if their salary was paid. They got it and left her. On hearing of it, the Pāsbānin took poison and died.” (*Chandra*, ii. 91). In the story that Tod was told about twenty-five years after the event, she is said to have been living in the citadel during the Raja’s absence and to have been induced to come out by a false message that he wanted her company, but that “at the moment she entered her litter, a blow from an unseen hand ended her existence.” (*Annals*, Marwar, ch. XIII). This is the true account, because the Maratha envoy in Jodhpur wrote on the day after the King’s death, “On 3rd July, the Raja returned to the fort-palace after visiting the Bālkrishna temple in the city. . . . At a quarter and a half of the night, he called the two female attendants of his favourite (Pāsbānin), and heard from them the story of how the sardārs had killed her. The narration went on till midnight, all the three weeping, when the Raja began to gasp and fainted.” (*JY*. 24).