Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v3.c43.t1.91

v3.c43.t1.91

of Begun, bore sway. From him sprung another of the numerous clans of Mewar, who assumed the patronymic Meghawat. These clans and tribes multiply, for Kala Megh and his ancestors were recognized as a branch of the Sangawat, one of the early subdivisions of the Chondawat, the chief clan of Mewar. The descendant of the ‘black cloud,’ whose castle of Begun is near the entrance to Antri, could not now muster above a hundred and fifty men at arms throughout the Patar; to which he might add as many more of foreign Rajputs, as the Hara and Gaur, holding lands for service. The head of the Meghawats has not above twenty villages in his fief of Begun, though these might yield twenty-five thousand rupees annually, if cultivated; the rest is still in the hands of the Mahrattas, as a mortgage contracted nearly forty years ago, and which has been liquidated ten times over: they include, in this, even a third of the produce of his own place of residence, and the town itself is never free from these intruders, who are continually causing disturbances. Unhappily for Mewar, the grand principle of the campaign and its political results, “that of excluding the Mahrattas from the west bank of the Chambal,” was forgotten in our successes, or all the alienated lands of Mewar as far as the Malwa frontier would have reverted to the Rana.