Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v3.c43.t1.215

v3.c43.t1.215

Kachaura is a township rated at six thousand rupees of annual revenue in the rent-roll of Mewar, but is now an inconsiderable village. In former times, it must have been a place of importance, for all around, to a considerable distance, the ground is strewed with fragments of sculpture of a superior character, and one spot is evidently the site of the cenotaphs of the family. The town had stood on the western bank of an immense lake, which through neglect is now a swamp; and, half-way up the hill, are disclosed, amidst the brushwood of the *dho*,¹ the ruins of a temple: but tradition has perished with the population, who were subjected at once to the curse of constant foreign invasion and the inroads of the Minas of the Karar. Thus a soil, whose richness is apparent from the luxuriance of its meadows, is in a state of entire desolation. Kachaura forms the *patta* of Shahpura in this district, whose chief has to serve two masters, for he is a tributary of Ajmer for Shahpura, itself a fief of Mewar, and holds an estate of about forty thousand rupees of annual rent in Mandalgarh, which has been two years under sequestration for his refusal to attend the summons to Udaipur, and for his barbarous murder of the chief of Amargarh.² This is a state of things which ought not to exist. When we freed these countries from the Mahrattas, we should have renounced the petty tributes imposed upon the surrounding chiefs not within the limits of the district of Ajmer, and the retention of which is the source of irritating discussions with these princes through the feudatories. Presuming on this external influence, the Shahpura Raja set his sovereign's warrant at defiance, and styled himself a subject of Ajmer; nor was it until he found he was bound by a double tie of duty, that he deigned to appear at the capital. The resumption of the estate in Mandalgarh alone overcame the inertness of the chief of Shahpura; he has already too much in the Chaurasi, or eighty-four [677] townships of Shahpura, for such a subject as he is, who prefers a foreign master to his legitimate lord. I would recommend that the Rathor chiefs of Marwar, beyond the Aravalli hills, now tributary to Ajmer, and who consequently only look to that State, should be replaced under their proper head: the sacrifice is of no moment to us, and to them it will be a boon.