Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c28.182

v2.c28.182

In contrasting these customs with analogous ones in the West, the reader should never lose sight of one point, which must influence the analogy, namely, the patriarchal form which characterizes the feudal system in all countries; and as, amongst the Rajputs, all their vassalage is of their own kin and blood (save a slight mixture of foreign nobles as a counterpoise), the paternity of the sovereign is no fiction, as in Europe; so that from the son of Champa, who takes the right hand of his prince, to the meanest vassal, who serves merely for his peti² (rations), all are linked by the tie of consanguinity, of which it is difficult to say whether it is most productive of evil or good, since it has afforded examples as brilliant and as dark as any in the history of mankind. The devotion which made twelve thousand, out of the fifty thousand, “sons of Jodha” prove their fidelity to Maldeo has often been emulated even to the present day.