Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c27.s7.t1.83

v2.c27.s7.t1.83

Meeting with the Mers.—Halted, and called a council of war to determine our course : we had gained the spot our guides had assigned as the only fitting one for bivouac before we reached the plains beyond the mountains; it afforded shade from the dews, and plenty of water. The munitions de bouche having gone on was a good argument that we should follow; but darkness and five miles more of intricate forest, through a path from which the slightest deviation, right or left, might lead us into the jaws of a tiger, or the toils of the equally savage Mer, decided us to halt. We now took another look at the group above-mentioned. Though the excitement of the morning was pretty well chilled by cold and hunger (poor sharpeners of the imagination), it was impossible to contemplate the scene before us without a feeling of the highest interest. From twenty-five to thirty tall figures, armed at all points, were sitting or reposing in groups round their watch-fires, conversing and passing the pipe from hand to hand, while their long black locks, and motley-fashioned turbans, told that they belonged to Marudesa. A rude altar, raised in honour of some "gentle blood" shed by the murky mountaineer, served as a place of rest for the chief of the party, distinguished by the gold band in his turban, and his deer-skin doublet. I gave the usual salutation of "Rama, Rama," to the chief and his party, and inquired after the health of their chieftain of Ghanerao, to whose courtesy I found I owed this mark of attention. This was the boundary between the two States of Marwar and Mewar, since the district of Godwar was lost by the latter about fifty years ago. The spot has been the scene of many a conflict, and a closer approach disclosed several other altars raised in honour of the slain; each represented a cavalier mounted on his war-steed, with his lance poised, denoting that in such attitude he fell in defending the pass, or redeeming the cattle from the plundering mountain Mer. A square tablet placed on each contained the date on which he gained "the mansions of the sun." Midnight being past, and bringing no hope of our appetites growing by what they might feed upon, Dr. Duncan and Captain Waugh took the jhul, or broadcloth-housing, from the elephant, and rolling themselves in it, followed the example of the chieftain and reposed upon the ashes of the brave, on an altar adjoining the one he occupied. I soon left them in happy forgetfulness of tigers, Meras, hunger, and all the fatigues of the day, and joined the group to listen to the tale with which they enlivened the midnight hour. This I can repeat, but it would have required the pencil of a master to paint the scene. It was a subject for Salvator Rosa; though I should [679] have been perfectly satisfied with one of Captain Waugh’s delineations, had he been disposed at that moment to exert the pictorial art. Several of my friends had encountered the mountaineer on this very spot; and these humble cenotaphs, covering the ashes of their kin, recalled events not likely to be repeated in these halcyon days, when the names of Bhil and Mer cease to be the synonyms of plunderer. As there may be no place more appropriate for a sketch of the mountaineers, the reader may transport himself to the glen of Kumbhalmer, and listen to the history of one of the aboriginal tribes of Rajasthan [680].