MANIKA RAE CHAUHAN S. 741, or A.D. 685.
the bard has recourse to celestial interposition in order to support Manika
Rae in his adversity. The goddess
Sakambhari appears to him, while seeking shelter from the pursuit of this merciless foe, and bids him establish himself in the spot where she mani- fested herself, guaranteeing to him the possession of all the ground he could encompass with his horse on that day ; but commanded him not to look back until he had returned to the spot where heleft her. He commenced the circuit, with what he deemed his steed could accomplish, but forgetting the injunction, he was surprised to see the whole space covered as with a sheet. This was the desiccated sar, or salt-lake, which he named after his patroness Sakambhari, whose statue still exists on a small island in the lake, now corrupted to Sambhar.^
However jejune these legends of the first days of Chauhan power, they suffice to mark with exactness their locality ; and the importance attached to this settlement is manifested in the itle of ' Sambhari Rao,' maintained by Prithiraj, the descendant of Manika Rae, even when emperor of all Northern India.
Manika Rae, whom we may consider as the founder of the Chauhans of the north, recovered Ajmer. He had a numerous progeny, who
established many petty dynasties throughout Western Rajwara, giving birth to various tribes, which are spread even to the Indus. The Khichi,^ the Hara, the Mohil, the Nirwana,
Bhadauria, the Bhaurecha,the Dhanetia, and the Baghrecha, are allde- scended from him.^ The Khichis were established in the remote Duab, called Sind-Sagar, comprising all the tract between the
Behat and the Sind, a space of sixty-eight coss, whose capital was Khichpur-Patan. The Haras obtained or founded Asi (Hansi) in Hariana ; while another tribe held Gualkund, the
celebrated Golkonda, now Haidarabad, and when thence expelled, regained Asir. The Mohils had the tracts round Nagor.* The An inscription on the pillar at Firoz Shah's palace at Delhi, belonging to this family, in which the word sakambhari occurs, gave rise to many in- genious conjectures by Sir W. Jones, Mr. Colebrooke, and Colonel Wilford. 2 Called Khichkot by Babur.
* In the Annals of Marwar it will be shown, that the Rathors conquered Nagor, or Naga-durg(the'serpent'scastle'), from the Mohils, who held fourteen himdred and forty villages so late as the fifteenth century. So
many of the colonies of Agnikulas bestowed the name of serpent on their