OCR Text |
Show RAJ RANA OF JH ALA WAR. A REFORMER The Raj Rana of Jhalawar, whose portrait is herewith presented, is the representative of a most illustrious branch of the Solar race, the ruler of an important state, and a reformer v. ho is endeavoring to introduce mod-err mod-err conditions without giving um-bi-age to the?ipholders of past traditions, tradi-tions, than which, as we know, there is no more difficult task. The historian his-torian of India shows how the British Brit-ish conquered the peninsula from a number of races by converting the enemies of one period into the allies of the -next; but it has never been made sufficiently clear that there was one race with which England never warred, the Rajputs of Rajasthan, "the Land of Princes." It was due to the wisdom of an ancestor of the Rana of Jhalawar, that the Rajputs sought and obtained an alliance and protection in the critical period of the eighteenth century, when the Marathas seemed for a moment likely -T0 " -Mix' f v) t - a- I to anticipate Great Britain in the unification of India. This prince was Znfim Singh Regut, and, practically speaking, ruler of Kotah for fifty years. Of him Colonel Tod, In perhaps the most entrancing work that any Englishman haB penned on India, has given a vivid picture, as the wise man who conducted con-ducted his country through the shoals and breakers of a stormy period, and his reflected glory descends on his -successor, Bhawanl Singh, the subject cf this portrait t |