Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
well as land to farm. Thus the population grew. Their agricultural
know-how, and the wealth it helped accumulate, naturally began to
attract the attention of various plundering tribes, like the Mer and
Meena, who began to make life at Pali hell. Unable to combat this
menace effectively, the Paliwals finally sought protection from the
Marwari ruler, Rao Siha, whom they apparently encountered as he
was returning from a pilgrimage to Dwarka, sacred city of Krishna.
Siha had little trouble making mincemeat of the marauding
tribesman, but his actions seem to have been far from selfless. After
the Marwari king had returned peace to Pali, he captured vast tracts
of land surrounding the city, and finally even the city, too, for himself.
Clearly, you don't ask a thief to catch a thief.
Some accounts, however, describe Siha gaining hold of Pali only
after executing its leading Brahmins during the festival of Holi -
ironically, one of the most joyous of all Hindu celebrations, and
connected with the conquest of desires and lust. This brutal incident
seems unlikely, however, since the historian V. N. Reu has translated
several inscriptions about Pali that show the city was actually owned
by the Solanki kings of Gujarat in the twelfth century, passing into
the hands of Chauhan rulers related to the Nadol tribe. If this is
true, then the Paliwals would have been mere farmers and traders,
not rulers. There was no need for Rao Siha to murder their chiefs
before capturing Pali.
Whatever the course of events, it seems clear that continued attacks
from Muslim tribes sweeping in from the west forced the Paliwals to
abandon Pali sometime during the thirteenth century and look for
more peaceful pastures, one group of them moving west, into Bhati
territory. For the next few centuries they seem to have moved around
quite frequently, as discarded monuments all over the area show,
before finally establishing themselves in eighty-four villages near
Jaisalmer.
After such a long period of upheaval, surprisingly, they then settled
in much as they had several hundred years before at Pali. By the
seventeenth century they had built up an enormous agricultural
base, growing staples like wheat and lentils, as well as cultivating
orchards. And they branched out into various kinds of business,
even trading with foreign countries. Their strict moral code and the
