37. The marriage of Durgâvatî is no proof that her father, the Chandêl Râjâ, was powerful in Mahoba in the time of Akbar. It is rather an indication that he was poor and weak. If he had been rich and strong, he would probably have refused his daughter to a Gond, even though complaisant bards might invent a Râjpût genealogy for the bridegroom. The story about the army of fifty thousand men cannot be readily accepted as sober fact. It looks like a courtly invention to explain a mésalliance. The inducement really offered to the proud but poor Chandêl was, in all likelihood, a large sum of money, according to the usual practice in such cases. Several indications exist of close relations between the Gonds and Chandêls in earlier times. Early in Akbar's reign, in the year 1564, Âsaf Khân, the imperial viceroy of Karrâ Mânikpur, obtained permission to invade the Gond territory. The young Râjâ of Garhâ Mandlâ, Bîr Narâyan, was then a minor, and the defence of the kingdom devolved on Durgâvatî, the dowager queen. She first took up her position at the great fortress of Singaurgarh, north-west of Jabalpur, and, being there defeated, retired through Garhâ, to the south-east, towards Mandlâ. After an obstinately contested fight the invaders were again successful, and broke the queen's stout resistance. 'Mounted on an elephant, she refused to retire, though she was severely wounded, until her troops had time to recover the shock of the first discharge of artillery, and, notwithstanding that she had received an arrow-wound in her eye, bravely defended the pass in person. But, by an extraordinary coincidence, the river in the rear of her position, which had been nearly dry a few hours before the action commenced, began suddenly to rise, and soon became unfordable. Finding her plan of retreat thus frustrated, and seeing her troops give way, she snatched a dagger from her elephant-driver, and plunged it into her bosom. . . . Of all the sovereigns of this dynasty she lives most in the recollection of the people; she carried out many highly useful works in different parts of her kingdom, and one of the large reservoirs near Jabalpur is still called the Rânî Talâo in memory of her. During the fifteen years of her regency she did much for the country, and won the hearts of the people, while her end was as noble and devoted as her life had been useful' (_C.P. Gazetteer_ (1870), p. 283; with references to Sleeman's article on the Râjâs of Garhâ Mandlâ, and 'Briggs' Farishta', ed. 1829, vol. ii, pp. 217, 218). A memoir of Âsaf Khan Abdul Majîd, the general who overcame Durgâvatî, will be found in Blochmann's translation of the _Aîn-i-Akbarî_, vol. i, p. 366.