On this festival the muster of all the feudal retainers is taken by the Rana in person, and honorary dresses and dignities are bestowed. Footnote 3.a.72: This article had become especially necessary, as the inferior chiefs, particularly those of the third class, had amalgamated themselves with the head of their clans, to whom they had become more accountable than to their prince. Footnote 3.a.73: This alludes to the treaty which this chief had formed, as the ambassador of the Rana, with the British Government. ----- BOOK IV ANNALS OF MEWĀR CHAPTER 1 We now proceed to the history of the States of Rajputana, and shall commence with the Annals of Mewar, and its princes. =Titles of Mewār Chiefs: descent from the Sun.=—These are styled Ranas, and are the elder branch of the Suryavansi, or ‘children of the sun.’ Another patronymic is Raghuvansi, derived from a predecessor of Rama, the focal point of each scion of the solar race. To him, the conqueror of Lanka,[4.1.1] the genealogists endeavour to trace the solar lines. The titles of many of these claimants are disputed; but the Hindu tribes yield unanimous suffrage to the prince of Mewar as the legitimate heir to the throne of Rama, and style him Hindua Suraj, or ‘Sun of the Hindus.’[4.1.2] He is universally allowed to be the first of the ‘thirty-six royal tribes’; nor has a doubt ever been raised respecting his purity of descent. Many of these tribes[4.1.3] have been swept away by time; and the genealogist, who abhors a vacuum in his mystic page, fills up their place with others, mere scions of some ancient but forgotten stem. =Stability of Mewār State.=—With the exception of Jaisalmer, Mewar is the only dynasty of these races[4.1.3] which has outlived eight centuries of foreign domination, in the same lands where [212] conquest placed them. The Rana still possesses nearly the same extent of territory which his ancestors held when the conqueror from Ghazni first crossed the ‘blue waters’[4.1.4] of the Indus to invade India; while the other families now ruling in the northwest of Rajasthan are the relics of ancient dynasties driven from their pristine seats of power, or their junior branches, who have erected their own fortunes. This circumstance adds to the dignity of the Ranas, and is the cause of the general homage which they receive, notwithstanding the diminution of their power. Though we cannot give the princes of Mewar an ancestor in the Persian Nushirwan, nor assert so confidently as Sir Thomas Roe his claims to descent from the celebrated Porus,[4.1.5] the opponent of Alexander, we can carry him into the regions of antiquity more remote than the Persian, and which would satisfy the most fastidious in respect to ancestry.