हम्मीर महाकाव्यम् (रणथम्भौर चौहान वीरगाथा एवं इतिहास)

10
Hindu monarch, who nobly replied that the sun would sooner rise
in the west, and Sumeru be levelled with the earth, than he would
break his plighted faith to the unfortunate refugee. The siege of
Raṇathambhôr was immediately commenced, and the fort
was at length captured, but the heroic Hammîra fell in its defence;
and the females of his family, determining not to survive him,
perished on the funeral pile.” This history of Hammîra supplies
some information which the sentimental and enthusiastic annalist
of Râjasthân would have gladly interwoven into the pages of his
work, and which sheds fresh light on the eventful period in which
the hero lived.
The Hammîra Mahâkâvya is divided into fourteen cantos, of
which the first four are concerned with the hero’s ancestors,—the
Chohâns, many of whom were paramount lords of India. ‘The
empire belongs to the Chohân’ is an admitted Indian historical
fiction, and the mere mention of the names of the old kings, many
of whom were the lords paramount of India, accompanied as it
is with much poetical nonsense, carries our knowledge of them
a step further than the researches of Colonels Wilford and Tod.
The narrative is, all through, very uneven. The genealogy of
the Chohâns, as given in the first three chapters, though with
some more names than are to be found in Tod’s list, cannot be
regarded as satisfactory. The author really knew nothing about
the more ancient kings of the race; the names are simply brought
in to give him opportunities of displaying his power for poetical
conceits, and thus the accounts of the princes about whom he had
no historical information are filled with fanciful conceptions, in
which some of the natural phenomena are explained with admir-
able contempt of the teachings of the “proud philosophy” of
Nature. From Pṛithvirâja Chohân to the death of Ham-
mîra the narrative is fairly historic; but the author now and then,
even here, relapses into rhapsody which amounts to a confession
of his ignorance of the historical facts of the reign in hand.