Mewar: The Fountain of the Sun

Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Bengali Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Khmer Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Marathi Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

This page is an extract from ANNALS AND ANTIQUITIES OF RAJASTHAN OR THE CENTRAL AND WESTERN RAJPUT STATES OF INDIA By LIEUT.-COL. JAMES TOD Late Political Agent to the Western Rajput States Edited with an Introduction and Notes by WILLIAM CROOKE, CIE. Hon. D.Sc. Oxon., B.A., F.R.A.l. Late of the Indian Civil Service In Three Volumes VOL. IV: ANNALS OF MEWAR [The Annals were completed in 1829] HUMPHREY MILFORD Oxford University Press London Edinburgh Glasgow New York Toronto Melbourne Bombay 1920 [The edition scanned]

Note: This article is likely to contain several spelling mistakes that occurred during scanning. If these errors are reported as messages to the Facebook page, Indpaedia.com your

The Fountain of the Sun

There was a fountain [Surya kunda) ' sacred to the sun ' at Valabhipura, from which arose? at the summons of Siladitya (according to the legend) the seven headed horse Saptasva, which draws the car of Surya, to bear him to battle. With such an auxiliary no foe could prevail ; but a wicked minister revealed to the enemy the secret of annulling this aid, by polluting the sacred foimtain with blood. This accomplished, in vain did the prince call on Saptasva to save him from the strange and barbarous foe : the charm was broken, and with it sunk the dynasty of Valabhi. Who the ' barbarian ' was that defiled with blood of kine [220] the fountain of the sun,^ whether Getae, Parthian, or Hun, we are left to conjecture. The Persian, though he venerated the bull, yet sacrificed him on the

1 Ferishta, in the early part of his history [i. Introd. Ixviii f.], observes that, some centuries prior to Vikramaditya, the Hindus abandoned the simple religion of their ancestors, made idols, and worshipped the host of heaven, which faith they had from Kashmir, the foundry of magic super stition.

2 Divested of allegory, it means simply that the supply of water was rendered impure, and consequently useless to the Hindus, which compelled them to abandon their defences and meet death in the open field. Alau-d din practised the same ruse against the celebrated Achal, the Khichi prince of Gagraun, which caused the surrender of this impregnable fortress. " It matters not," observes an historian whose name I do not recollect, " whether such things are true, it is sufficient that they were behoved. We may smile at the mention of the ghost, the evil genius of Brutus, appearing to him before the battle of PharsaUa ; yet it never would have been stated, had it not assimilated with the opinions and prejudices of the age." And we may deduce a simple moral from " the parent orb refusing the aid of his steed to his terrestrial offspring," viz. that he was deserted by the deity. Fountains sacred to the sun and other deities were common to the Persians, Scythians, and Hindus, and both the last offered steeds to him in sacrifice. Vide History of the Tribes, article ' Aswamedha,' p. 91.

altar of Mithras ; ^ and though the ancient Guebre purifies with the urine ^ of the cow, he will not refuse to eat beef ; and the iniquity of Cambyses, who thrust his lance into the flank of the Egyptian Apis, is a proof that the bull was abstractedly no object of worship. It would be indulging a legitimate curiosity, could we bj^ any means discover how these ' strange ' tribes obtained a footing amongst the Hindu races ; for so late as seven centuries ago we find Getae, Huns, Kathi, Ariaspas, Dahae, definitively settled, and enumerated amongst the Chhattis rajkula. How much earlier the admission, no authority states ; but mention is made of several of them aiding in the defence of Chitor, on the first appearance of the faith of Islam upwards of eleven hundred years ago.