History Of Jaipur Jadunath Sarkar a HISTORY OF JAIPUR c. 1503-1938 Revised and edited by Raghubir Sinh 8) Orient Longman Distributed By APT BOOKS, INC. 141 East 44 Street New York, N.Y. 10017 © 1984 Maharaja Sawai Man Singh Il Museum, Jaipur First published 1984 ISBN 0 86131 472 7 Published by Orient Longman Limited Registered Office 5-9-41/1 Bashir Bagh, Hyderabad 500 029, India Other Offices . Kamani Marg, Ballard Estate, Bombay 400 038 17 Chittaranjan Avenue, Calcutta 700 072 160 Anna Salai, Madras 600 002 1/24 Asaf Ali Road, New Delhi 110 002 80/1 Mahatma Gandhi Road, Bangalore 560 001 5-9-41/1 Bashir Bagh, Hyderabad 500 029 S.P. Verma Road, Patna 800 001 Phototypeset in India by Composers, E-8 Kalkaji, New Delhi 110 019 Printed in India by Allied Enterprises, Friends Colony Industrial Area, G.T. Road, Delhi 110 032 DS 4Es~ IBF, Contents Foreword by Rajmata Gayatri Devi Preface Editor's Note List of Abbreviations The Land, Its Features and Produce I The People Ht The Early Kachhwa Kings IV How Akbar Won the Kachhwas Over Akbar’s Wars Against the Maharana of Mewar VI The Kachhwas as Wardens of the North-Western Frontier Vil Man Singh in Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and the Deccan 75 Vill Interlude and Mirza Raja Jai Singh (First Phase): 1614-1637 97 IX dai Singh in the War of Mughal Succession 113 dai Singh and Shivaji 123 XI The Last Campaign and Death of Jai Singh I 135 XII Ram Singh and Bishan Singh, 1667-1700 145 Xill Sawai Jai Singh’s Early Career 156 XIV Sawai Jai Singh’s Dealings with the Marathas 174 XV Sawai Jai Singh and Rajputana 187 XVI Sawai Jai Singh’s City and Observatory 205 XVII Sawai Jai Singh’s Achievement and Character 218 XVIII Ishwari Singh, 1743-1750 229 XIX Sawai Madho Singh, 1751-1768 242 XX The Jaipur State and the Imperial Delhi Government, 1778-1785 259 XXI Mahadji Sindhia Invades Jaipur: the Lalsot Cam- paign, 1786-1787 270 XXII The Last Rajput Struggle against the Marathas: the Battle of Patan, 1790 XX The Last Years of Sawai Pratap Singh, 1791-1803 XXIV The British Alliance 315 XXV The Last Days of the Ancient Regime in Jaipur XXVI The Reign of Ram Singh II: The First Half XXVII The Reign of Ram Singh II: An Era of Progress 353 XXVIII Sawai Madho Singh II 365 XXIX Sawai Man Singh II: Education and Share in Administration 379 XXX daipur Administrative Activities Today Plates Appendices 1. From Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah I's letter to Sawai Singh Il 2. Captain J. Pillet’s account of Sawai Pratap Singh Index Foreword His Highness Maharaja Sawai Man Singh Il, the late Maharaja of Jaipur, ascended the gaddi on the 7th of September, 1922, and he was in- vested with full ruling powers on the 14th of March, 1931. The Maharaja showed early promise of becoming one of the outstanding rulers of the Jaipur dynasty, and right from the beginning of his reign he was conscious of the responsibilities that he had inherited. He had been brought up in the traditional custom of the Kachhawas, and while modernising and democratising the administration of his State, he kept up the traditions of the House of Jaipur. Maharaja. Sawai Man Singh II was immensely proud of his forefathers, and in order to perpetuate their achievement, he thought of the idea of commission- ing a History of Jaipur. At that time the most eminent and respected historian in India was Sir Jadunath Sarkar. The Maharaja asked him if he would take on this assignment and Sir Jadunath Sarkar fortunately accepted. The History of Jaipur is an integral part of the history of India, and the Pothikhana at the City Palace in Jaipur has a valuable collection of records not easily available in other places. Perhaps this was one of the reasons that prompted him to accept. In 1939-1940 Sir Jadunath Sarkar completed the manuscript. However, due to various obstacles and adverse conditions, the publica- tion of this book has been delayed for more than 40 years and therefore it is even more gratifying that it has, at last, found the light of day. 1 would like to thank Maharaj Kumar Raghubir Sinh.of Sitamau for his dedicated work in editing this vast manuscript. It was a painstak- ing task which he had undertaken with great care and devotion. My grateful thanks to all those who are connected with the publication of this book and particularly to those two persons who are no longer with us—His late Highness Maharaja Sawai Man Singh Bahadur II and Sir Jadunath Sarkar, one for the idea of commissioning this book and the other for writing the original work. I hope that this book will be of interest to the general public because it is not merely a record of the achievements of the Kachhawa Rulers of Amber and Jaipur, but it is a very relevant part of India’s past. Gayatri Devi December 12, 1983 Rajmata of Jaipur Preface A granddaughter of Shah Jahan the Magnificent, harangued her troops on a battle-field by saying, ‘The honour of the Chaghtai Emperors is identical with that of the Rajput’. In promoting the glory of the Mughal Empire and in imposing its peace upon all India, no Rajput clan has played a greater part than the Kachhwa! house of Jaipur. Their five-colour banner, the panch-ranga, has floated almost within sight of the Oxus river in the heart of Central Asia, and beyond Qandahar to the Helmand river across the Persian frontier. Within India itself the Kachhwa (Jaipur) standard has penetrated to the Garhwal hills in the north, the bank of the Brahmaputra in the fur- thest east, and the Krishna river in the south. It has crossed the terri- ble Rann of Cutch, in the extreme west, in the cause of the Mughal Empire. One prince of this house has been the viceroy of Afghanistan, another has held the Khyber pass, and a third was commissioned, (but too late), to stem the tide of Maratha advance in Malwa. For some years one prince of Amber held the proud position of the premier of the Mughal empire, unequalled in rank by any other grandee, Hindu or Muslim. Under another ruler of this line, the Kachhwa capital was known as the most beautiful and symmetrically laid out city in India and the home of learning and the arts. Then followed half a century of eclipse of the royal power (1778-1835), because of minorities, faction fights and the lack of statesmanship in the governing class. This unhappy period also coin- cided with that change in the art of warfare in India in consequence of which ‘gunpowder killed chivalry’. The Rajputs, living their tradi- tional lives in a secluded corner in India, refused to adapt themselves to this change for a long time, and paid the penalty of their conser- vatism by humiliation at the hands of the Marathas and their French- led battalions. With the year 1835, a new era commenced. Modern light began, slowly, to triumph over a medieval order, in both state and society. The improvement of administration and the spread of education and arts in this region of Rajputana assumed a more rapid advance after the Sepoy Mutiny, till at last in the twentieth century, the Jaipur Government has come to take its place in the front ranks of Indian States in terms of prosperity and progress. The history of a dynasty with such a past is well worth writing. And there is a special reason why it should be written. Alone among the ruling: states of India, whether Hindu or Muslim, the Kachhwa ix House of Jaipur has preserved its ancient archives almost intact for three centuries and a half. Nowhere else in India can we find even a tenth of the mass of farmans, parwanahs, reports, newsletters and other historical documents exchanged between the Mughal Govern- ment of Delhi and the Court of Jaipur, or between the Rajahs and their officers and allies, with the original brocaded covers (kharitas) and even the wax seals intact. In more recent times, Jaipur has been the home of a school of art and a museum, the fame of which has drawn travellers from every country of the world. The historian who has such a rich variety and profusion of the pure raw materials of his craft at his command, may well congratulate himself on holding a posi- tion unmatched elsewhere in the realm of Indian historiography. dadunath Sarkar Kachhwa—To correctly transliterate, the correct Devanagiri form of this word in Roman, it should be spelt Kachhawaha as is generally done by historians writing in English. It seems that Sir dadunath Sarkar followed the spelling used by Harprasad Shastry in his writings, and he has used the spelling Kachhwa consistently in many of his other writings and also throughout this history. Hence though the form Kachhwa is incomplete etymologically and an enequereth transliteration of the original word, it has been tetained in this history as originally used by Jadunath Sarkar. Ed.