Page:The Indian Antiquary Vol 2.djvu/353

 chudAsama ras. 315 November, 1873.] with a force to Alidar Bodidhar and took with him Devait Bodar. Devait, seeing that resist¬ ance would be useless, brought his own son Uga, who was of Noghan’s age, to the Thanadar. The Thanadar at once put him to death and re¬ turned to Junagadh. After the departure of the ThanadAr, Devait Bodar sent for his son-in-law Sanstio, an inhabitant of Alidar, and confided to him the fact of Noghan being concealed at his house, and requested his advice as to the best mode of seating him on the throne of Junagadh. Sanstio replied, “ Let us collect Ahirs on the occasion of my marriage to your daughter, and let us then invite the Thanadar to the wedding, and at that time proclaim Noghan king with the aid of our army.” This being determined on, a day was fixed for the nuptials, and the Thana¬ dar was invited. He came with his army to Alidar Bodidhar. His men were placed separ¬ ately in a large enclosure, and pretended prepar¬ ations for the feast were made. Suddenly the Ahirs fell upon them and put them all to the sword. Ra Noghan was now proclaimed king, and seated on the throne of Junagadh. The following duho is said in praise of Devait: —

When none could give even a dolcra in alms, Devait Bodar gave his son Ugo the grandson of Ugamsi. May fame always attend on all the Bodardas, Who giving Uga as a substitute saved Rae No¬ ghan. Ra Noghan ascended the gddi in Sam vat 874. In Samvat 875 there was a terrible famine in Sorath, and the Ahirs went to Sindh to obtain food, and Jasal daughter of Devait accompanied them. Hamir Sumro, the king of Sindh, seeing her beauty, was enamoured of her, and carried her off by force. Heaving this, Ra Noghan collected an army and went to Sindh and defeated Hamir and rescued Jasal. He then returned to Juna¬ gadh and reigned there till his death, in Samvat 916. Ra Noghan had four sons: 1, Bhim; 2, Sodo; 3, Kuvat; and 4, Khengar. Khengar, the youngest son, succeeded him, and it is this Khen¬ gar whose queen, the beautiful Ranik Devi, became a sati at Wadhwan after her husband s defeat and subsequent death. In this bardic account of the rise of the Chu¬ rl a sam as the principal feature of interest is the extremely old Gujarati of the poetry. The translations are perhaps liable to correction,— indeed it is very difficult to make anything out of the first set of verses. I may here mention that the legend of Ra Dyas under different forms is extremely common throughout Gujarat, Kathiawad, Kachh, and Sindh. The Sindhi ver¬ sion of the legend will be found in Captain G. Stack’s Sindhi Grammar. There is considerable difficulty in assigning a correct date to Ra Gario. In one version of the verses regarding Ra Gario’s conquest of Kanauj the word Jayachandra occurs in¬ stead of Raj-Indra. Now if this were the Jaya¬ chandra whose daughter was carried off by Pritliiraja Chohan, Ra Gario’s date would be about the end of the 12th century of the Chris¬ tian era. Again, if the ballad quoted by Mr. Kinloch Forbes in the Rds MdlA be accepted as correct, and as the year of the accession of Siddhraja was A. D. 1094, and as only Ra Noghan intervened between Ra Dyas and Ra Khengar, it would be impossible to accept the date of Sam. 860*61 (a.d. 803-4) as the date of Ra Dyas. The following explanation may perhaps throw some light on the question. In the Sindhi version the king (of Pattan) is called Anerai. It is well known to all who have consulted bards that though almost always correct in their main facts, they are almost always incorrect in details. Especially regarding the kingdom of Anhilwada Pattan the greatest confusion prevails. To the kings of this capital are assigned almost all the famous deeds performed in Gujarat, and among these kings Kumar Pala and Siddhraja Jesingh are the ones most frequently quoted. They are assigned by one legend to the 9th, by others to the 10th, 11th, even 12th centuries. If then in the case of Ra Dyas, his foe be simply made some mighty Raja —possibly Anerai of Somnat h Pattan or of Dhank, known also as Preh Pattan and Rehew as Pattan—the difficulty vanishes, especially if in the case of Mr. Forbes’s legend Siddhraja’s name be considered merely as a synonym of some mighty king,—and numerous instances might be given of SiddhrAja’s name being used in this way. An instance occurs to me in the Jethva chronicles where the name of