Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v3.c42.s2.t1.249

v3.c42.s2.t1.249

It will be deemed a singular fatality, that this last conspicuous act in the political life of the regent should have been on the spot which exactly sixty years before witnessed the opening scene of his career; for the field of Bhatwara¹ adjoined that of Mangrol. What visions must have chased each other on this last memorable day, when he recalled the remembrance of the former! when the same sword, which redeemed the independence of Kotah from tributary degradation to Amber, was now drawn against the grandson of that sovereign who rewarded his services with the first office of the State! Had some prophetic Bardai withdrawn the mantle of Bhavani, and disclosed through the vista of threescore years the regent in the foreground, in all the panoply of ingenuous youth "spreading his carpet" at Bhatwara, to review the charge of the Kachhwaha chivalry, and in the distant perspective that same being palsied, blind, and decrepit, leading a mingled host, in character and costume altogether strange, against the grandchildren of his prince, and the [585] descendants of those Haras who nobly seconded him to gain this reputation, what effect would such a prospect have produced on one whom the mere hooting of an owl on the house-top had “ scared from his propriety ” ?