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Rh from which large quantities of salt are extracted. Marble is mined in the north of the state and along the south-east border.

The population consists of Rathor Rājputs (who form the ruling class), Brāhmans, Charans, Bhāts, Mahajans or traders, and Jāts. The Charans, a sacred race, hold large religious grants of land, and enjoy peculiar immunities as traders in local produce. The Bhāts are by profession genealogists, but also engage in trade. Mārwāri traders are an enterprising class to be found throughout the length and breadth of India.

The principal crops are millets and pulses, but wheat and barley are largely produced in the fertile tract watered by the Lūni river. The manufactures comprise leather boxes and brass utensils; and turbans and scarfs and a description of embroidered silk knotted thread are specialities of the country.

The Mahārājā belongs to the Rathor clan of Rājputs. The family chronicles relate that after the downfall of the Rathor dynasty of Kanauj in 1194, Sivajī, the grandson of Jāi Chānd, the last king of Kanauj, entered Mārwār on a pilgrimage to Dwarka, and on halting at the town of Pāli he and his followers settled there to protect the Brāhman community from the constant raids of marauding bands. The Rathor chief thus laid the foundation of the state, but it was not till the time of Rāo Chānda, the tenth in succession from Sivajī, that Mārwār was actually conquered. His grandson Jodha founded the city of Jodhpur, which he made his capital. In 1561 the country was invaded by Akbar, and the chief was forced to submit, and to send his son as a mark of homage to take service under the Mogul emperor. When this son Udāi Singh succeeded to the chiefship, he gave his sister Jodhbāi in marriage to Akbar, and was rewarded by the restoration of most of his former possessions. Udāi Singh’s son, Gaj Singh, held high service under Akbar, and conducted successful expeditions in Gujarat and the Deccan. The bigoted and intolerant Aurangzeb invaded Mārwār in 1679, plundered Jodhpur, sacked all the large towns, and commanded the conversion of the Rathors to Mahommedanism. This cemented all the Rājput clans into a bond of union, and a triple alliance was formed by the three states of Jodhpur, Udāipur and Jaipur, to throw off the Mahommedan yoke. One of the conditions of this alliance was that the chiefs of Jodhpur and Jaipur should regain the privilege of marriage with the Udāipur family, which they had forfeited by contracting alliances with the Mogul emperors, on the understanding that the offspring of Udāipur princesses should succeed to the state in preference to all other children. The quarrels arising from this stipulation lasted through many generations, and led to the invitation of Mahratta help from the rival aspirants to power, and finally to the subjection of all the Rājput states to the Mahrattās. Jodhpur was conquered by Sindhia, who levied a tribute of £60,000, and took from it the fort and town of Ajmere. Internecine disputes and succession wars disturbed the peace of the early years of the century, until in January 1818 Jodhpur was taken under British protection. In 1839 the misgovernment of the rājā led to an insurrection which compelled the interference of the British. In 1843, the chief having died without a son, and without having adopted an heir, the nobles and state officials were left to select a successor from the nearest of kin. Their choice fell upon Rājā Takht Sinh, chief of Ahmednagar. This chief, who did good service during the Mutiny, died in 1873. Mahārajā Jaswant Singh, who died in 1896, was a very enlightened ruler. His brother, (q.v.), conducted the administration until his nephew, Sardar Singh, came of age in 1898. The imperial service cavalry formed part of the reserve brigade during the Tirah campaign.

The state maintains a railway running to Bikanir, and there is also a branch railway into Sind. Gold, silver and copper money is coined. The state emblems are a jhar or sprig of seven branches and a khanda or sword. Jodhpur practically escaped the plague, but it suffered more severely than any other part of Rajputana from the famine of 1899–1900. In February 1900 more than 110,000 persons were in receipt of famine relief.

The city of is 64 m. by rail N.W. of Mārwār junction, on the Rajputana railway. Pop. (1901), 60,437. It was built by Rāo Jodha in 1459, and from that time has been the seat of government. It is surrounded by a strong wall nearly 6 m. in extent, with seventy gates. The fort, which stands on an isolated rock, contains the mahārājā’s palace, a large and handsome building, completely covering the crest of the hill on which it stands, and overlooking the city, which lies several hundred feet below. The city contains palaces of the mahārājā, and town residences of the thākurs or nobles, besides numerous fine temples and tanks. Building stone is plentiful and close at hand, and the architecture is solid and handsome. Three miles north of Jodhpur are the ruins of Mandor, the site of the ancient capital of the Parihar princes of Mārwār, before its conquest by the Rathors. Mills for grinding flour and crushing grain have been constructed for the imperial service troops. The Jaswant college is affiliated to the B.A. standard of the Allahabad university. To the Hewson hospital a wing for eye diseases was added in 1898, and the Jaswant hospital for women is under an English lady doctor.

JOEL. The second book among the minor prophets in the Bible is entitled The word of Yahweh that came to Joel the son of Pethuel, or, as the Septuagint, Latin, Syriac and other versions read, Bethuel. Nothing is recorded as to the date or occasion of the prophecy. Most Hebrew prophecies contain pointed references to the foreign politics and social relations of the nation at the time. In the book of Joel there are only scanty allusions to Phoenicians, Philistines, Egypt and Edom, couched in terms applicable to very different ages, while the prophet’s own people are exhorted to repentance without specific reference to any of those national sins of which other prophets speak. The occasion of the prophecy, described with great force of rhetoric, is no known historical event, but a plague of locusts, perhaps repeated in successive seasons; and even here there are features in the description which have led many expositors to seek an allegorical interpretation. The most remarkable part of the book is the eschatological picture with which it closes; and the way in which the plague of locusts appears to be taken as foreshadowing the final judgment—the great day or assize of Yahweh, in which Israel’s enemies are destroyed—is so unique as greatly to complicate the exegetical problem. It is not therefore surprising that the most various views are still held as to the date and meaning of the book. Allegorists and literalists still contend over the first and still more over the second chapter, and, while the largest number of recent interpreters accept Credner’s view that the prophecy was written in the reign of Joash of Judah (835–796 ?), a powerful school of critics (including A. B. Davidson) follow the view suggested by Vatke (Bib. Theol. p. 462 seq.), and reckon Joel among the post-exile prophets. Other scholars give yet other dates: see the particulars in the elaborate work of Merx. The followers of Credner are literalists; the opposite school of moderns includes some literalists (as Duhm), while others (like Hilgenfeld, and in a modified sense Merx) adopt the old allegorical interpretation which treats the locusts as a figure for the enemies of Jerusalem.

There are cogent reasons for placing Joel either earlier or later than the great series of prophets extending from the time when Amos first proclaimed the approach of the Assyrian down to the Babylonian exile. In Joel the enemies of Israel are the nations collectively, and among those specified by name neither Assyria nor Chaldaea finds a place. This circumstance might, if it stood alone, be explained by placing Joel with Zephaniah in the brief interval between the decline of the empire of Nineveh and the advance of the Babylonians. But it is further obvious that Joel has no part in the internal struggle between spiritual Yahweh-worship and idolatry which occupied all the prophets from Amos to the captivity. He presupposes a nation of Yahweh-worshippers, whose religion has its centre in the temple and priesthood of Zion, which is indeed conscious of sin, and needs forgiveness and an outpouring of the Spirit, but is not visibly divided, as the kingdom of Judah was between the adherents of spiritual prophecy and a party whose national worship of Yahweh involved for them no fundamental separation from the surrounding nations. The book, therefore, must have been written before the ethico-spiritual and the popular conceptions of Yahweh came into conscious antagonism, or else after the fall of the state and the restoration of the community of Jerusalem to religious rather than political existence had decided