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Eight thousand warriors had fallen, besides thirty thousand inhabitants of Chitor who had participated in the fight. With the conquest of Chitor which I have treated at considerable length because it ended in a typically Indian manner, the resistance of the Rajputs broke down. After Akbar had attained his purpose he was on the friendliest terms with the vanquished.
Not a sound anywhere, not even from the near-by trees. She saw a noiseless lizard slide jerkily across a patch of moonshine and dissolve into the purple shadow beyond. What was this temple? What gods had been worshiped here? And why was it deserted? She had heard her father tell of the ruined city of Chitor. Plague? . . . Kathlyn shuddered.
And still the earth grew up to the heights, and the protection of the hills was slowly withdrawn from Chitor, for on the heights they made they set their engines of war. Then in a red dawn that great saint Narayan came to the Queen, where she watched by her window, and spoke. "O great lady, I have dreamed a fearful dream. Nay, rather have I seen a vision."
It testifies to his nobility of character as well as to his political wisdom that after this complete success he not only did not celebrate a triumph, but on the contrary proclaimed the renown of the vanquished throughout all India by erecting before the gate of the imperial palace at Delhi two immense stone elephants with the statues of Jaymal, the "Lion of Chitor," and of the noble youth Pata who had performed the most heroic deeds in the defense of Chitor.
One turns aside to hide a smile on hearing the pedestrian interpretation given to Ravidas' poem by a Western writer: "He afterwards built a hut, set up in it an idol which he made from a hide, and applied himself to its worship." Ravidas was a brother disciple of the great Kabir. One of Ravidas' exalted chelas was the Rani of Chitor.
Too late to save Chitor, he retook it, and restored Bikramajit to the throne; but the guardian goddess had turned her face from the doomed city, and its final fall was at hand. The Emperor Akbar, having laid almost all India at his feet, determined to bring the proud princes of Rajputana into subjection. He attacked Chitor, but was foiled by the masculine courage of the Rana's concubine queen.
He had been in India till he was nearly eight; and he talked about India, as he talked about school, in a rather important voice, as befitted the only person present who knew anything of either. Roy was quite convinced he knew nothing at all about Rajputana or Chitor or Prithvi Raj or the sacred peacocks of Jaipur.
All being now ready for the last act of the hideous drama, the Rana caused the gates to be opened, and with his valiant remnant of an army fell upon the foe only to perish to a man, and then, and not till then, did the victorious Alla set foot of a conqueror within Chitor, where now no living thing remained to stay him from razing her deserted temples to the ground.
But what shall be said of the joy of the King and of her who had imagined this thing, instructed of the Goddess who is the other half of her Lord? So the procession returned, singing, to Chitor with those Two in the midst; but among the dogs that fled was Allah-u-Din, his face blackened with shame and wrath, the curses choking in his foul throat.
Then I saw the cry was out against me. I ran from Mhow by night, bribing the police, who had been bribed to hand me over without question to my enemies in the South. Then I lay in old Chitor city a week, a penitent in a temple, but I could not get rid of the letter which was my charge. I buried it under the Queen's Stone, at Chitor, in the place known to us all.
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