Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c27.s7.t5.64

v2.c27.s7.t5.64

The name of Bisaladeva, the famed Chauhan king of Ajmer, is the most conspicuous here; and they still point out the residence of his great ancestor, Ajaipal, on the Nagpahar, or ‘serpent-rock,’ directly south of the lake, where the remains of the fortress of the Pali or Shepherd-king are yet visible. Ajaipal was, as his name implies, a goatherd, whose piety, in supplying one of the saints of Pushkar with daily libations of goats’ milk, procured him a territory. Satisfied, however, with the scene of his early days, he commenced his castle on the serpent-mount; but his evil genius knocking down in the night what he erected in the day, he sought out another site on the opposite side of the range: hence arose the far-famed Ajamer.¹ Manika Rae is the most conspicuous connecting link of the Chauhan Pali kings, from the goatherd founder to the famed Bisaladeva.² Manika was slain in the first century of the Hijra, when “the arms of Walid conquered to the Ganges”; and Bisaladeva headed a confederacy of the Hindu kings, and chased the descendants of Mahmud from Hindustan, the origin of the recording column at Delhi. Bisaladeva, it appears from inscriptions, was the contemporary of Rawal Tejsi, the monarch of Chitor, and grandfather of the Ulysses of Rajasthan, the brave Samarsi, who fell with 13,000 of his kindred in aid of the last Chauhan Prithiraj, who, according to the genealogies of this race, is the fourth in descent from Bisaladeva. If this is not sufficient proof of the era of this king, be it known that Udayaditya, the prince of the Pramaras (the period of [776] whose death, or A.D. 1096, has now become a datum),¹ is enumerated amongst the sovereigns who serve under the banners of the Chauhan of Ajmer.