Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c27.s7.t3.11

v2.c27.s7.t3.11

Descent of the Rāthors.—The Rathor, like many other dynasties not confined to the East, claims celestial descent. Of their Bhat, we may say what Gibbon does of the Belgic genealogist who traced the illustrious house of Este from Romulus, that "he riots in all the lust of fiction, and spins from his own bowels a lineage of some thousand years." We are certain that there were sovereigns of Kanauj in the fifth century, and it is very probable that they ruled there prior to the era of Christianity. But this is accounted nothing by these lovers of antiquity, who never stop short of Swayambhuva,¹ and the ark, in which the antediluvian records of the Rathors may have been preserved with those of the De Courcys. But we will not revert to those “ happy times, when a genealogical tree would strike its root into any soil, and the luxuriant plant could flourish and fructify without a seed of truth.” Then the ambition of the Rathor for a solar pedigree could be gratified without difficulty.