Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/738

 704 J D J E 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 Mughal emperor. When this son Udai Sinh succeeded to the chiefship, he gave his sister Jodhbai in marriage to Akbar, and was rewarded by the restoration of most of his former possessions. Udai Sink s son, Raja Geve Sinh, held high service under Akbar, and conducted successful expeditions in Guz- erat and the Deccan. The bigoted and intolerant Aurangzeb in vaded Marwar in 1679, plundered Jodhpur, sacked all the large towns, and commanded the conversion of the Rahtors to Mahomet- anisrn. This cemented all the Rajput clans into a bond of union, and a triple alliance was formed by the three states of Jodhpur, Udai pur, and Jeypore, to throw off the Mahometan joke. One of the conditions of this alliance was that the chiefs of Jodhpur and Jeypore should regain the privilege of marri;ige with the Udaipur family, which they had forfeited by contracting alliances with the Mughal emperors, on the understanding that the offspring of Udaipur 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 Marhatta help from the rival aspirants to power, and finally to the subjection of all the Rajput states to the Marhattas. Jodhpur was conquered by Sindhia, who levied from it a tribute of 30,000, and took from it the fort and town of Ajmere. Interne cine 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 raja led to an insurrection which compelled the interference of the British, and Jodhpur was held in military occupation for five months, until the raja entered into engagements for the future good government of his subjects. In 1843 the chief having died with out 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 Raja Takht Sinh, chief of Ahmadnagar. This chief, who did good service during the mutiny, died in 1873. The constitution of Jodhpur may be described as a tribal suzerainty rapidly passing into the feudal stage. The pattait or tribal chief is the ruler of his estate, and the judge almost exclusively in all matters of civil and criminal jurisdiction over his people. These chiefs owe military service to their suzerain, and exact the same from their dependants, to whom assignments of land have been made, and who form their following the whole constitut ing the following of the suzerain himself. The maharaja alone has the power of life and death. The revenue of the state is mainly derived from the land, salt, and customs duties, a cess imposed on the feudatory nobles, succession dues, &c. , estimated at a total of about 250,000 a year. The state pays a tribute to the British of 9800 a year, besides an annual payment of 11,500 for the support of a contingent the Erinpura Irregular Force. The inahanija also maintains an independent military force of 20 field and 250 other guns, 200 gunners, 3545 cavalry, and 5020 infantry. JODHPUR, the capital of the above state, in 26 17 N. lat. and 73 4 E. long., was built by Rao Jodha in 1549, and from that time has been the seat of government of tli3 principality. It is surrounded by a strong wall nearly 6 miles in extent, with seventy gates. The fort stands on an isolated rock, and contains the maharuja s palace, a large and handsome building, completely covering the crest of the hill on which it stands, arid overlooking the city, which lies several hundred feet below. The city contains many handsome buildings palaces of the maharaja, and town residences of the tlidkurs or nobles, besides numerous fine temples and tanks. Building stone is plentiful, and close at hand, and the architecture solid and handsome. Three miles north from Jodhpur are the ruins of Mandor, the site of the ancient capital of the Purihar princes of Marwar, prior to its conquest by the Rahtors. JOEL. The second book among the minor prophets is entitled The word of Jehovah that came to Joel the son of Fethuel, or, as the Septuagint, Latin, Syriac, and other versions read, Bethuel. Nothing is recorded as to the date or occasion of the prophecy, which presents several peculiarities that aggravate the difficulty always felt in interpreting an ancient book when the historical situation of the author is obscure. 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 Jehovah, 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. Alle- goristsandliteralists 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, a rising and powerful school of critics follow the view suggested by Vatke (Bib. Theol., p. 462 sq.), and reckon Joel among the post-exile prophets. Other scholars give yet other dates : see the particulars in the elaborate work of Merx, Die Prophetic des Joels- und ihre Ausleger, Halle, 1879. 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, The reasons for placing Joel either earliei or later than the great series of prophets extending from th.3 time when Amos first proclaimed the approach of the Assyrian down to the Babylonian exile are cogent. In Joel the enemies of Israel are the nations collectively, and among those specified by name neither Assyria nor Chaldgea 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 Jehovah- worship and idolatry which occupied all the prophets from Amos to the captivity. He presupposes a nation of Jehovah-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 Jehovah 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 Jehovah came into conscious antagonism, or else after the fall of the state and the restoration of the community c -2 Jerusalem to religious rather than political existence had decided the contest in favour of the prophets, and of the Law in which their teaching was ultimately crystallized. The considerations which have given currency to an early date for&quot; Joel are of various kinds. The absence of all mention of one great oppressing world-power seems most natural before the westward march of Assyria involved Israel in the general politics of Asia. The purity of the style is also urged, and a comparison of Amos i. 2, Joel iii. 16 (Heb.,iv. 16), and Amos ix. 13, Joel iii. 18 (iv. 18), has been taken as proving that Amos knew our book. The last argument might be inverted with much greater pro bability, and numerous points of contact between Joel and other parts of the Old Testament (e.g., Joel ii. 2, Exod. x. 14; Joel ii. 3, Ezek. xxxvi. 35; Joel iii. 10, Mic. iv. 3) make it not incredible that the purity of his style which is rather elegant than original and strongly marked is in