Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c27.s7.t2.43.2

v2.c27.s7.t2.43.2

When, towards the conclusion of the fourteenth century, the founder of the Chondawats repaid the meditated treachery of Ranmall of Mandor by his death, he took possession of that capital and the entire country of the Rathors (then but of small extent), which he held for several years. The heir of Mandor became a fugitive, concealing himself in the fastnesses of the Aravalli, with little hope that [694] his name (Jodha) would become a patronymic, and that he would be honoured as the second founder of his country : that Mandor itself should be lost in Jodhpur. The recollection of the feud was almost extinct ; the young Rana of Chitor had passed the years of Rajput minority, and Jodha continued a fugitive in the wilds of Bhandak-parao, with but a few horse in his train, indebted to the resources of some independents of the desert for the means of subsistence. He was discovered in this retreat by a Charan or bard, who, without aspiring to prophetic powers, revealed to him that the intercession of the queen-mother of Chitor had determined the Rana to restore him to Mandor. Whether the sister of Jodha, to give éclat to the restoration, wished it to have the appearance of a conquest, or whether Jodha, impatient for possession, took advantage of circumstances to make his entrance one of triumph, and thereby redeem the disgrace of a long and humiliating exile, it is difficult to decide ;