Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c27.s6.68

v2.c27.s6.68

Literature among the Rajputs. Observatories.—We now come to the literary attainments of the lords of Rajasthan, of whom there is none without sufficient clerkship to read his grant or agreement for *rakhwali* or blackmail; and none either so ignorant, or so proud, as the boasted ancestral wisdom of England, whose barons could not even sign their names to the great charter of their liberties. The Rana of Udaipur has unlimited command of [650] his pen, and his letters are admirable; but we may say of him nearly what was remarked of Charles the Second—" he never wrote a foolish thing, and seldom did a wise one." The familiar epistolary correspondence of the princes and nobles of Rajasthan would exhibit abundant testimony of their powers of mind: they are sprinkled with classical allusions, and evince that knowledge of mankind which constant collision in society must produce. A collection of these letters, which exist in the archives of every principality, would prove that the princes of this country are upon a par with the rest of mankind, not only in natural understanding, but, taking their opportunities into account, even in its cultivation. The prince who in Europe could quote Hesiod and Homer with the freedom that the Rana does on all occasions Vyasa and Valmiki, would be accounted a prodigy; and there is not a divine who could make application of the ordinances of Moses with more facility than the Rana of those of their great lawgiver Manu. When they talk of the wisdom of their ancestors, it is not a mere figure of speech. The instruction of their princes is laid down in rules held sacred, and must have been far more onerous than any system of European university education, for scarcely a branch of human knowledge is omitted. But the cultivation of the mind, and the arts of polished life, must always flourish in the ratio of a nation's pink leggings to make them look like their Highland originals. The Yanādis, a forest tribe in Madras, play the bagpipe (Thurston, *Tribes and Castes*, vii. 431).]