Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v3.c41.s1.136

v3.c41.s1.136

The Asvamedha.—Amongst the vanities of the founder of Amber, it is said that he intended to get up the ceremony of the Asvamedha yajna, or ‘sacrifice of the horse,’ a rite which his research into the traditions of his nation must have informed him had entailed destruction on all who had attempted it, from the days of Janamejaya the Pandu, to Jaichand, the last Rajput monarch of Kanauj. It was a virtual assumption of universal supremacy; and although, perhaps, in virtue of his office, as the satrap of Delhi, the horse dedicated to the sun might have wandered unmolested on the banks of the Ganges, he would most assuredly have found his way into a Rathor stable had he roamed in the direction of the desert: or at the risk both of jiva and gaddi (life and throne), the Hara [368] would have seized him, had he fancied the pastures of the Chambal.³ He erected a sacrificial hall of much beauty and splendour, whose columns and ceilings were covered with plates of silver; nor is it improbable that the steed, emblematic of Surya, may have been led round the hall, and afterwards sacrificed to the solar divinity. The Yajnasala of Jai Singh, one of the great ornaments of the city, was, however, stripped of its rich decoration by his profligate descendant, the late Jagat Singh, who had not the grace even of Rehoboam, to replace them with inferior ornaments; and the noble treasures of learning which Jai Singh had collected from every quarter, the accumulated results of his own research and that of his predecessors, were divided into two portions, and one-half was given to a common prostitute, the favourite of the day. The most remarkable MSS. were, till lately, hawking about Jaipur.