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Updated: June 13, 2025
"Perhaps," she suggested, "there's a native potentate arriving at the northern gate. They're very punctilious about their salutes, you know." Another crash silenced her. Amber continued to count. "Twenty-one," he said when it seemed that there was to be no more cannonading. "Isn't that a royal salute?" "Yes," said the girl; "four more guns than the Maharana of Khandawar himself is entitled to."
The building itself, like most Indian palaces, is composed of a heterogeneous agglomeration in all sorts of sizes and styles. Each successive Maharana having apparently added a bit here and a bit there as his capricious fancy prompted. Jane visited the armoury to-day with the Resident, who went to choose a shield to be presented by the Maharana to the Victoria Museum at Calcutta.
The Princes of Rajputana, headed by the Maharana of Udaipur, with genealogies reaching back into the mythical ages, have handed down to the present day the traditions of Hindu chivalry. In the south of India, the rulers of Mysore and Cochin and Iravancore, who also claim Rajput blood, still personify the subjection of the older Dravidian races to the Aryan invaders from the north.
But they quickened, saluting with a single movement and a flash of steel, as the Maharana drew nearer, and so proved themselves troopers of the State, standing guard with naked swords.
As a matter of fact, the Maharana, having gone to Delhi to please the British authorities, promptly returned to Udaipur to please himself, alleging a terrific headache as reason for instant departure from the capital, without his having left his very own specially reserved first-class compartment!
The Maharana seemed to find it not unpleasant, for he smiled grimly beneath his moustache. "There was work to be done," he said briefly "for the Cause. And thou how hast thou wrought, O Breaker of Hearts?" The woman cast the silver mouthpiece from her and clasped her hands behind her head. "Am I not Naraini?" "The man is ours?" "Mine," she corrected amiably.
The station is a long way from the town, as the Maharana, a most staunch conservative of the old school, having the railway more or less forced upon him, drew the line at three miles from his capital, and fixed the terminus there.
Here in the heart of the most conservative of native States, whose ruler, the Maharana, Sir Fateh Singh, claims descent from that ancient luminary the Sun, we found novelty and interest in every yard of the three miles that stretch between the station and the capital. The scrub-covered desert has given place to a wooded and cultivated valley, ringed by a chain of hills, sterile and steep.
It is still the custom of nearly all men here above the rank of coolie to carry swords or other weapons. For are these Rajputs not of a proud and warlike race, as may be seen by their bearing; and is not their Maharana of the longest lineage in India, and the highest in rank of all the Rajput princes? A few miles from the capital is Chitorgarh.
Thou art only Salig Singh, Maharana of Khandawar, but I am Naraini, a free woman." "Thou !" Rage choked the Rajput. "Thou," he sputtered "thou art " "Softly, Heaven-born, softly lest I loose a thunderbolt for thy destruction. Is it wise to forget that Naraini holds thy fate in the hollow of her hands?" She sat forward, speaking swiftly and with malice.
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