Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v1.c20.s3.t1.37

v1.c20.s3.t1.37

¹ The *tija sakha Chitor ra*, or ‘third sack of Chitor,’ was marked by the most illiterate atrocity, for every monument spared by Ala or Bayazid was defaced, which has left an indelible stain on Akbar’s name as a lover of the arts, as well as of humanity. Ala’s assault was comparatively harmless, as the care of the fortress was assigned to a Hindu prince; and Bayazid had little time to fulfil this part of the Mosaic law, maintained with rigid severity by the followers of Islamism. Besides, at those periods, they possessed both the skill and the means to reconstruct: not so after Akbar, as the subsequent portion of the annals will show but a struggle for existence. The arts do not flourish amidst penury: the principle to construct cannot long survive, when the means to execute are fled; and in the monumental works of Chitor we can trace the gradations of genius, its splendour and decay. [There is no good evidence that Akbar destroyed the buildings (Smith, *op. cit.* 90).]