CHITTORE or Chetur, a town in Rajputana, in the kingdom of Mewar. Its dynasty are Rajput, and claim to be descended from Lob, the eldest son of Rama, of the Solar dynasty. They say that they were first ruling at Balabhipura, a city in the gulf of Cambay, but their capital was laid waste by a son of Nushirwan of Persia, in A.D. 524. The Rajput queen escaped the general destruction, and gave birth to a son, named Goho, from whom the rajas of Udaipu.r." are descended. Goho established the kingdom of Edur, and eight princes succeeded him on the throne. The race seem to have remained in the desert till the middle of the 8th century, but in A.D. 727 Bappa took Chittore. Shortly afterwards Bappa pro ' ceeded to Saurashtra, and married the daughter of Esupgole, prince of the island of Bunderdhiva. With his bride he conveyed to Chittore the statue of Vyan-mata, the tutelary goddess of her race, who still divides with Eklinga the devotion of the Gehlot princes. The temple in which he enshrined this islandic goddess yet stands on the summit of Chittore, with many other monuments assigned by tradition to Bappa. Bappa is not a proper name, it signifies merely a child. He is frequently styled Syeel, and in inscriptions Syeel Adhes, the mountain lord. The Mori prince from whom Bappa took Chittore was of the Tak or Takshak race, of whom Nagnecha, Nagani Mata, was the mother, represented as half woman and half serpent, the sister of the mother of the Scythic race, according to their legends. Many rites of the rana of Mewar's house are decidedly Scythic.
According to Sir H. Elliot, however, when Maho med bin Kasim, the general of Walid, overran Gujerat about A.D. 718, and advanced to Chittore, Bappa met and entirely defeated him, and after this Bappa was raised to the throne of Chittore. After a long and prosperous reign, Bappa abdi cated and departed to Khorasan, Tod says to Scythia. In the reign of Khuman, his great grandson Mahmun, governor of Khorasan, in vaded Chittore, but was defeated and expelled by Khuman after twenty-four engagements. Haber, 1527, sustained a great defeat at Futehpur Sikri at the hands of the Rajput Rama Singha, chief of Chittore; but in 1527 Baber led his army a second time against the Rajput prince, whom he over threw, and completely broke his power. While ruled by Oody Singh, Chittore was invested by the emperor Akbar, and captured after a pro longed siege. Oody Sing13, at the approach of the imperial army, withdrew to the Aravalli hills, and left Jeymul, the Rajput chief of Bednore, to defend his kingdom ; Jeymul, with 8000 of his men and women, perished on the occasion, and 741 maunds of plunder were taken away by the army of Akbar. The capture of Chittore was regarded at the time by the Rajput race as the greatest of misfortunes, and they have perpetuated the remembrance of it by impressing on all their correspondence the figures 741. Oody Singh did not re-occupy Chittore, but founded Udaipur, which be made his capital. —Elliot's Hist. of India ; Tod's Rajasthan, i. p. 594 ; Elphinstone.