Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c27.s6.23

v2.c27.s6.23

⁴ I remember in my subaltern days, and wanderings through countries then little known, one of my Rajput soldiers at the well, impatient for water, asked a woman for the rope and bucket by the uncivil term of rand: “ Main Rajputni che,” ‘ I am a Rajputni,’ she replied in the Hara dialect, to which tribe she belonged, “ aur Rajput ki ma cho,” ‘ and the mother of Rajputs.’ At the indignant reply the hands of the brave Kalyan were folded, and he asked her forgiveness by the endearing and respectful epithet of “ mother.” It was soon granted, and filling his brass vessel, she dismissed him with the epithet of “ son,” and a gentle reproof. Kalyan was himself a Rajput, and a bolder lives not, if he still exists; this was in 1807, and in 1817 he gained his sergeant’s knot, as one of the thirty-two firelocks of my guard, who led the attack, and defeated a camp of fifteen hundred Pindaris.