" It was stipulated that Shivaji with his son Sambhaji should go and pay his respects to the kings at Delhi, and that Mirza Raja's son, Ram Sing, should accompany him, and introduce him to the King, and obtain for Shivaji the royal pardon. When they parted Mirza Raja presented Shivaji with many valuable presents." Shivaji was coldly received by Aurangzeb, and he would have been murdered if Jey Sing's son had not discovered the plot. Three years later (1608) Jey Sing died. Tod states he was poisoned at the instigation of Aurangzeb, whose jealousy and resentment he had aroused. The chronicle says : " He had twenty-two thousand Rajpoot cavalry at his disposal, and twenty-two great vassal chiefs who commanded under him ; that he would sit with them in durbar, holding two glasses, one of which he called Delhi, the other Satarra, and dashing one to the ground, would exclaim, there goes Satarra, the fate of Delhi is in my right hand, and this with like facility I can cast away." " These vaunts reaching the Emperor's ear, he had recourse to the same diabolical expedient which ruined Marwar, of making a son assassin of his father. He promised the suc cession to the Gadi of Amber to Keerut Sing, younger son of the Raja, to the prejudice of his elder brother, Ram Sing, if he effected the horrible deed. The wretch, having per petrated the crime by mixing poison in his father's opium, returned to claim the investiture, but the King only gave him the district of Kamah. From this period, says the chronicle, Amber declined." Thirty years after the death of Mirza Raja, Jey Sing the Second, better known as Siwai Jey Sing, mounted the musnud. The title Siwai, which his descendants adopt to this day, was given him by the Moghul Emperor. " The word means one and a quarter, and is supposed to measure the superiority of the bearer to all contemporaries, whom the unit signifies." In vulgar English, Jey Sing was considered head and shoulders above the rest. He showed marked capacity as a statesman and legislator, and to his capacity as an engineer and architect the city he founded bears testimony. Of his proficiency in mathematics and astronomy men of science of Western reputation have borne witness. " He had erected ob servatories, with instruments of his own invention, at Delhi, Jeipoor, Oojein, Benares, and Mathura upon a scale of Asiatic grandeur ; and their results were so correct as to astonish the most learned. He had previously used such instruments as those of Ulug Beg (the Royal astronomer of Samarcand), which failed to answer his expectations. From the observations of seven years at the various observatories he constructed a set of tables. While thus engaged he learned through a Portuguese missionary, Padre Manuel, the progress which his favourite pursuit was making in Portugal, and he sent ' several skilful persons along with him' to the Court of Emanuel. The King of Portugal despatched Xavier de Silva, who communicated to the Rajpoot the tables of De la Hire." Jey Sing writes : " On examining and comparing the calculations of these tables with actual observation it appeared there was an error in the former, in assigning the moon's place, of half a degree ; although the error in the other planets was not so great, yet the times of solar and lunar eclipses he " (Jey Sing speaks of himself in the third person) " found to come out later or earlier than the truth by the fourth part of a ghurry, or fifteen /uls (six minutes of time)." Jey Sing had Euclid's Elements, the treatises on plane and spherical trigonometry, and Napier on the construction and use of logarithms, to be translated into Sanskrit ; he also collated for himself a table of stars, which he called Tij Muhammad Shahi, the preface of which he thus opens : " Let us devote ourselves at the altar of the King of kings, hallowed be His name ! in the book of register of whose power the lofty orbs of heaven are only a few leaves ; and the stars, and that heavenly courser the sun, small pieces of money, in the treasury of the Empire of the most High." From inability to comprehend the all-encompassing bene ficence of His power, Hipparchus is an ignorant clown who wrings the hand of vexation ; and in the contemplation of his exalted majesty, Ptolemy is a bat, who can never arrive at the sun of truth ; the demonstrations of Euclid are an imperfect sketch of the forms of His contrivance.
" But since the well-wisher of the works of creation, and the admiring spectator of the works of infinite wis1om, Siwai Jey Sing, from the first dawning of reason in his mind, and during its progress towards maturity, was entirely devoted to the study of mathematical science, and tie bent of his mind was constantly directed to the solution of its most difficult problems ; by the aid of the Supreme Author he obtained a thorough knowledge of its principles and rules, etc." After entering the gates of the palace, on the right lies a cluster of stone buildings containing the instruments de signed by the Royal mathematician. The present Maharaja has had the Kantra or Observatory restored, so it now stands as it did in the days of his illustrious predecessor. It was Jey Sing's coadjutor in science and history, Vedyadhar, a Jain of Bengal, who designed his new capital for him. " Jeypore," says Tod, " is the only city in India built upon a regular plan, with streets bisecting each other at right angles." It is the regularity of the plan of the city, the straight streets, the houses all built after the same pattern, which deprive it of one of the mystic charms of the East. The houses, all of a pale pink or violet colour, ornamented with paintings, look well in the bright sunshine, but we miss the gloom and shadow, the mystery and romance of an Oriental city. The wide spaces, filled with a white and red crowd, present a gay scene, but it is merely spectacular. The Rajpoot cavaliers on their fine horses, the bullock carts, the palanquins, the camels, the donkeys, the richly capari soned elephants making their way through the throng, merely seem to pass over a stage. The houses, pierced with small windows filled in with slabs of perforated stone, are mere scenery, mud walls made to look like houses, and painted pink. Jeypore is, as Andre Chevrillon says, " India of
novels and the opera, fairy-like and incredible." The fairy land of the Parisian opera, but not of the Arabian Nights.
The Maharaja's palace, surrounded by a lofty wall built by Jey Sing, stands on a large open space in the centre of the town. The only portion visible from the streets is a building " of a singularly vivid rose-colour, rising in the form of a pyramid, bristling with a nine-storied facade, composed of a hundred bell-turrets and sixty-five projecting windows, adorned with colonnettes and balconies, pierced in open work with countless flowers cut out in the stone ; a vapoury, impossible construction. This is the palace of the Wind —the palace of the Wind. How enchanting the name." The palace is, however, a mere mask of stucco, and it is more fantastic than beautiful. The Chandra Mahal, which forms the centre of the principal palace, is also a pyramidal building seven stories high, but the architecture is of a far higher order than that of the Hall of the Winds. It over looks the Royal gardens, which are extensive, and in their way extremely beautiful, full of fountains, mango and orange trees, and flowering shrubs. " The garden," says Bishop Heber, whose comparisons are always happy, " is surrounded by a high embattled wall, having a terrace at the top like that of Chester, and beneath it a common passage (as one of the Ministers of State who accompanied me told me) for the Zenanah to walk in." The Diwan-i-Khas, or Hall of Audience, which occupies the ground floor of the Chandra Mahal, is " a noble open pavilion, with marble pillars, richly carved, rather inferior in size, but in other respects fully equal to the Hall of Audience at Delhi." Here the Bishop and the Resident " sat cross-legged on the carpet, there being no chairs, and we kept our hats on." The Maharaja was a minor, and the Government was at the time being conducted under the Regency of his mother— whose vices matched those of Theodora. The Bishop writes : " I was mortified to find that the rannee never appeared even behind the purdah, though we were told she was looking through a latticed window at some distance in front." " After the usual exchange of compliments," says the Bishop, " some very common-looking shawls, a turban, necklace, etc., were brought in as presents from the rannee to me, which were followed by two horses and an elephant, of which she also requested my acceptance." When the audience was over the Bishop and the Resident mounted their elephants and returned to the Residency, " the ran nee's presents going before us." The Bishop, when he reached camp, had the old warning brought home to him, " Put not your trust in princes." " Of these presents it appeared that the elephant was lame, and so vicious that few people ventured to go near him. One of the horses was a very pretty black, but he also turned out as lame as a cat, while the other horse was in a poor condition, and at least, as my people declared, thirty years old." Eight years after Heber's visit (1825) the Rani died, and two years later the young Maharaja Jey Sing. It was supposed that he was poisoned by one Jota Rama, the paramour of the late Queen. On the death of the Maharaja the Agent of the Governor-General proceeded to Jeypore, which was a scene of corruption and misgovernment, and assumed the guardian ship of the infant heir. The strong measures which he adopted led to the formation of a conspiracy by Jota Ram. " The Agent's life was attempted, and his Assistant was murdered." 1 The murderers were seized and executed by order of the Native Minister. A Council of Regency, con sisting of five of the principal nobles, was formed, under the superintendence of a political agent, and, as has been the case with other Native States under similar circumstances, Jeypore was delivered from ruin and anarchy. " The army was reduced, every branch of the administration was re formed, and suttee, slavery, and infanticide were prohibited." Maharajah Ram Sing, when he was installed ruler, found a well-governed prosperous State, and he proved himself a capable administrator. He did good service during the mutinies, for which he received a grant of land and also the privilege of adoption. He took advantage of this privilege shortly before his death, and adopted a young relative be longing to a distant branch (the present Maharaja), who was a poor village lad of the true blood. Siwai Madhao Sing, the hundred and fortieth descendant in a direct line from Rama, proud of his descent, proud of his country, of her ancient customs and her ancient faith, has shown that the Rajpoot has not lost his capacity for government. His Royal city has public institutions which would do credit to any Western capital. The public garden of Jeypore has a good title to be considered one of the finest in India. Here are well-kept grass plots, with beds planted with ferns and roses, and shrubberies bright with sky-blue and blood-red flowers. In the centre of the garden stands the Albert Hall, whose foundation was laid by the King-Emperor when he visited the city as Prince of Wales. On the rocky slope of a hill that bears the name of Nahargarh (" The Tiger's Strong hold ") can be seen the word Welcome in gigantic white letters, another memento of his visit. The Albert Hall con tains a large Durbar hall, and one of the best arranged museums in India. As we strolled through it we came upon an interesting group. Three or four Rajpoots from the wilds, with their women, whose faces were veiled, listening with rapt attention to a guide who was dilating on the imitations of the frescoes in the Ajanta caves. The silks and carpets, the porcelain and clay vessels, are well worth a close study, and it is instructive to go from the museum to the School of Art and compare the work which is being done with the work of the past. The pencil drawings are very nice, the inlaid work is very pretty, but something has gone from the beauty, an indescribable something, the soul of the artist. A School of Art does the same kind and amount of good as the purely external literary English education at the Maharaja's Col lege, and it also works as much mischief.