Rao Maldeo Rathore also called the "most Potent Prince of Hindustan" by the Muslim historian Ferishta stretched the Rathore frontiers to within fifty miles of Delhi. Maldev gave an early indication of the extraordinary talents that would propel him to the centre-stage of Indian history for a decade, when, in 1527, as the heir-apparent, he commanded the Rathore cavalry to the plain of Khanua, forty miles from Agra, against the Mughal invader Babur.
The Rajput Confederacy there was defeated and the Battle of Khanua all but established Babur as the Emperor of India. But the first Mughal emperor died only three years later, and taking advantage of the disorder in Delhi, Maldev, who succeeded his father in 1532, launched his clan into a decade of unrestrained expansion. By 1540 he held sway over more than a hundred thousand square miles of territory. Delhi was only fifty miles away and all of Rajputana had been subdued. It was the high noon of Rathoree Raj, the glory of that decade still exciting the imagination of the Rathore today. Alas! It would not last, for in the same year, a thousand miles away, there took place a series of events that would culminate in the invasion of Marwar.
It was in 1540 that Sher Shah the Afghan defeated Babur's son and successor, Humayun, who fled to Sind (now in Pakistan) after a brief halt in Marwar at Maldev's invitation. It is said that Maldev finally asked the exiled emperor to leave Marwar when reports of Mughal soldiers butchering cows trickled into Jodhpur. At any rate, Humayun left and Sher Shah, who had requested Maldev to capture him, was furious. In the winter of 1543 the Afghan brought his army of eighty thousand to Marwar. The Rathore army of fifty thousand was defeated in a close battle of sword and stratagem at Sumel, a village sixty miles north of Jodhpur. Sher Shah, exhausted after a long and hard-won campaign, and terribly relieved, exclaimed, "For a handful of millet I almost lost the throne of Hindustan!" This millet, a coarse grain, the staple diet of most of Marwar, is immortalised in the Jodhpur Coat-of-Arms. In the top left corner of the Arms there are three tiny ears of millet which remind the world of the day the Rathores almost captured the heart of Hindustan.
The defeat at Sumel lead to further ignominy; Jodhpur and Mehrangarh's first occupation. Maldev returned only after Sher Shah was killed in a freak accident a year later. And though he was able to recover most of Marwar he was never again more than a shadow of his former self.
Two years after he died, in 1564, the twenty-one-year-old Akbar, the third Mughal emperor, invaded Marwar and occupied Mehrangarh and Jodhpur again; the second occupation. This did not break the spirit of Maldev's son and successor, Rao Chandra Sen, Marwar's 'Forgotten Hero' who remained free and independent, for all it was worth, till he died in 1581. Two years after he died, his unpopular brother Udai Singh acceded to the Gadi or throne of Marwar with Akbar's blessings. Thus began the Mughal era in Marwar.
The Rathore chiefs now began to enjoy two separate identities. In Marwar they were royal, the rulers and the heads of their clan. In recognition of this the Emperor bestowed upon them the title of Raja or King and later of Maharaja or Great King. Their second identity emerged at the Mughal Court where they were Mansabdars or Officers of the Realm. It was in this, the more mundane capacity, that they amassed huge fortunes. These fortunes were hard won. In the next hundred years the Rathore rulers, all senior Mansabdars, travelled the length and breadth of the country. Gubernatorial and vice-regal posts, the command of armies and the grant of rich lands outside Marwar; the Rathore submission to the Mughals expanded their horizons beyond belief.
In 1678, when Maharaja Jaswant Singh I died in Afghanistan and Aurangzeb invaded Marwar, the Rathores happily demonstrated to the world, perhaps even to themselves, that they could still fight. Jaswant Singh I died without an heir but two of his queens were pregnant and it was around the elder baby, Ajit Singh, born a few months later, that the clan now rallied, displaying a degree of resilience and loyalty unsurpassed in history.
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