=Zālim Singh of Kotah.=—It was the assertion of this supremacy over Kotah as well as Bundi which first brought into notice the most celebrated Rajput of modern times, Zalim Singh of Kotah. Rao Durjansal, who then ruled that State, had too much of the Hara blood to endure such pretensions as the casual possession of Ranthambhor conferred upon his brother prince of Amber, who considered that, as the late lieutenant of the king, he had a right to transfer his powers to himself. The battle of Bhatwara, in S. 1817 (A.D. 1761), for ever extinguished these pretensions, on which occasion Zalim Singh, then scarcely of age, mainly contributed to secure the independence of the State he was ultimately destined to govern. But this exploit belongs to the annals of Kotah, and would not have been here alluded to, except to remark, that had the Bundi army joined Kotah in this common cause, they would have redeemed its fiefs from the tribute they are still compelled to pay to Jaipur. Ummeda’s active mind was engrossed with the restoration of the prosperity which the unexampled vicissitudes of the last fifteen years had undermined; but he felt his spirit cramped and his energies contracted by the dominant influence and avarice of the insatiable Mahrattas, through whose means he recovered his capital; still there was as yet no fixed principle of government recognized, and the Rajputs, who [494] witnessed their periodical visitations like flights of locusts over their plains, hoped that this scourge would be equally transitory. Under this great and pernicious error, all the Rajput States continued to mix these interlopers in their national disputes, which none had more cause to repent than the Haras of Bundi. But the hold which the Mahrattas retained upon the lands of ‘Dewa Banga’ would never have acquired such tenacity, had the bold arm and sage mind of Ummeda continued to guide the vessel of the State throughout the lengthened period of his natural existence: his premature political decease adds another example to the truth, that patriarchal, and indeed all governments are imperfect where the laws are not supreme.