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JUNE, 1922)
HISTORY OF THE MERS OF MERWARA
113
THE ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF THE MERS OF MERWARA.1
BY LIEUT-COL. JOHN HOSKYN, C.B.E., D.8.O. THE Mers of Merwara are the Highlanders of Rajputana. Inhabiting a narrow strip of hilly country in the heart of that province, they have always maintained their independence against the attacks of the powerful Rajput States by which they are surrounded ; and a fres and manly carriage, the hereditary badge of liberty, distinguishes them from the neighbouring tribes of bondsmen and tillers of the soil. For centuries before the coming of the British, the Mers not only held their own in the rocky fastnesses of the Arâvali Hills, but made active reprisals on the enemies who sought to subdue them.
Issuing from their narrow glens, parties of these lean caterans would speed North and East and West ; avoiding beaten roads and travelling by desert bye paths; one or two of them mounted on small ponies, and leading other ponies with capacious sacks for the receipt of booty, but nost of them on foot, each armed with a spear, a leather shield on his shoulder, and a short curved sword slung at his side. Thus they held on their way to some distant town or village, drowsing in the stagnant security of the plains ; where, that night, would be heard the shout of the startled watchmen, quickly stifled; the cries of terrified bunnias, dragged from their beds and persuaded, without loss of words to produce their hoards; the shrieks of women, and the hoarse cries of the plunderers ranging swiftly through the streets. The city of Ajmer, lying amongst their own hills, was a milch-cow to these wiry little marauders. They knew the secret paths by which they could swarm like bees into the Fort of Târâgaph, and they took toll of the marches of Bûndi, Shahpura, Jodhpur and Udaipur up to the very walls of those cities.
Naturally, the proud Rajput States looked on these reivers with contempt, considerably tempered by exasperation. The small chiefs and Thâkurs whose lands lay at the foot of the hills, paid blackmail to the hillmen, and even sought to gain their friendship by giving them assistance and shelter when they needed it; but the larger states scorned such terms as these. Jaipur, Jodhpur and Udaipur each claimed the over-lordship over different portions of the Mer country; and several expeditions were sent by the Princes of those States to punish the “Crows," as they called the hillmen, and destroy their nests in the glens. But the Rajput warrior, brave as a lion in a galloping, sword and lance encounter in the open was never a hill-fighter ; his horse was useless to him in the narrow, rocky ravines and thick scrub-jungle of the mountains ; his lance could not reach the active enemies who swarmed on the hill-sides shooting arrows, hurling down boulders and charging home, sword in hand, when they saw an opening. The Rajput Armies were forced to retire ; the “Crows," squatting on the ridges above them, croaked cheerfully at the retreating cavalcades, and not many nights passed before the villages of the plains were again paying the penalty of their Prince's failure.
It was not until about a hundred years ago that these wild mountaineers were subdued by a British force, and in due time a British Officer, a subaltern in the Bengal Artillery, Dixon by name came to rule over them. How this Gunner subaltern devoted himself to the service of this "new-caught sullen people"; how he exorcised the "devil" in them, and taught the "child" that remained the elementary lessons of civilisation and discipline; how with firm hand and kindly heart he won their devotion, once for all, to the British ; how he fought for them against political intrigue, when the Rajput Princes, seeing them tamed and, as they thought, broken, revived their old claims to their land; how he lived among them, and how, finally,
1 Reprinted from the Journal of the United Service Institution of India, Vol. L, April 1921.
