In Maharana Sangram Singh I, we have a warrior-king of Mewar whom the world knows as Rana Sanga. Every year 12th April is commemorated as the birth anniversary of the Rana who remains larger than life even after 541 years; his valorous deeds and aura continue to dominate early modern Indian history.

There could be few examples in our contemporary world to match the veneration which Rana Sanga has inspired over the centuries. It was a tumultuous journey for Rana Sanga as he assumed charge in 1509 CE of a kingdom surrounded by Malwa, Gujarat and Delhi, all of which were hostile kingdoms constantly challenging Mewar to battle.

Sanga turned his attention first to consolidating the State of Mewar with its capital at Chittaurgarh, the fortcity acknowledged as the most powerful one of its times. “Garhon ka garh hai Chittaurgarh” is what the bards sang, poetically proclaiming Chittaur to be the mightiest amongst all forts.

Modern-day gurus would highlight it as a management challenge which an enormous fort-city presented in the 15th century CE: think of the urban planning; water, waste and energy management, military administration of men and materials, horses, elephants, and armaments, maintenance of ancient temples and palaces.

The list would seem endless, and surely the young Rana would have had his hands full, even though having grown up in Chittaurgarh he was well-versed with the ‘command and control’ systems of the prosperous State of Mewar. Udaipur Rajya ka Itihas (History of the Udaipur State, Volume 1) remains a seminal work of GH Ojha wherein he wrote that Rana Sanga will be remembered for carrying the mantle of greatness of his illustrious grandfather, the multi-faceted, multi-talented warrior-King Maharana Kumbhakaran, or Rana Kumbha as he was known.

Ojha places Sanga’s sagas in the context of Mewar’s history stretching back to the 8th century CE; with each generation of the Maharanas building on platforms they inherited. It was akin to giants standing on the shoulders of other giants, demonstrating their sensitivity towards the legacies of spirituality and religion, polity and military, society and culture.

If Mewar’s geographical spread and historically-acquired values assumed iconic status in the 15th and 16th century CE, the credit goes to both Rana Kumbha and Rana Sanga, an eminent grandfather and his equally celebrated valorous grandson. In the reign of Rana Kumbha, from 1433 to 1468 CE, Chittaur truly became the centre of the sub-continent.

The Rana provided a burst of creative energy and military might. In GH Ojha’s twovolume history we find Rana Kumbha emerging as one of the greatest military generals of the Sisodia Rajputs. Like his legendary predecessors, Rana Kumbha was a defender of Mewar’s territories, not ready to accept the sway of the Delhi Sultans over Gujarat, Malwa and parts of Rajasthan.

Mewar was invaded several times in the early years of Rana Kumbha’s reign; each attack was successfully defended. In 1437 CE, Sultan Mahmud, the King of Malwa, was taken prisoner after a pitched battle. The Rana proved his magnanimity as a victor on the battlefield and off it too. Sultan Mahmud was treated as a guest and released without demands for ransom.

This was the hallmark of Mewar’s conduct in victory. Warfare had its ethics and values; warrior-leaders like Rana Kumbha were upholding ancient Hindu ideals even though the world was soon acquiring an increasingly complex political, ethnic, sectarian, and cultural landscape.

The saga of Rana Kumbha continues for he was a relentless builder. He constructed no less than 32 of the 84 fortresses in Mewar. The monumental Kumbhalgarh, named after the Rana himself, was a majestic fort-city with 33 km-long stone walls encircling the hills. But it is in Chittaur that Rana Kumbha’s most impressive construction is seen: the Kirti Stambha or the Tower of Victory, 120 feet high rising through nine floors.

In ‘The Hegemony of Heritage-Ritual and Record in Stone’, UC Berkeley scholar Dr Deborah L Stein provided us with a fascinating perspective to the Kirti Stambha: “In contrast to the typical victory narrative, both the rich sculptural contents and the inscriptions of the nine-story interior tell a different story ~ a tale that could be romantically coined the making of one of India’s first museums, because it is the story of a collection and a very permanent collection at that.”

She felt that the combination of two features distinguishes this tower from any previous Indian monument: “First, the incised labeling of each image in stone underneath; and, second, an interior turn-square staircase that permits the viewer to travel across nine different interior landings within a span of ten minutes or so.” It was as if Rana Kumbha and his creative team were curating it for posterity. “All prior towers, stambhas, and even Kirti Stambha in South Asia and even western Asia relied on surface decoration of the exterior; only the Kirti Stambha had such rich interior sculptural decoration.” Going beyond terming it as India’s first museum, Dr Stein said, “Kirti Stambha is India’s first image archive, predating the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the American Institute of Indian Studies’ photo archives by several centuries. No matter what English label we put on the Kirti Stambha, those who created it in the fifteenth century decided the iconography could not stand alone, so text was added.

Hundreds of years before photography was invented, the labeled images of the Kirti Stambha suggest archival tendencies on the part of Rana Kumbha, Jaita, and the other artists involved in the project,” she added, paying her tribute to the Rana’s saga and sense of history with a remarkable flourish. Rana Sanga did not have the creative freedom which his distinguished grandfather had in Chittaurgarh.

There were too many battles being fought on different fronts but the Mewar army had been reorganized, its forts well-garrisoned. In Dr Rima Hooja’s ‘Rajasthan ~ A Concise History’ we read of Mewar-Malwa battles and the subsequent defeat of Sultan Mahmud II. Mewar under Rana Sanga was now ruling over a larger swathe of territories including Kalpi, Bhilsa, Sarangpur, Chanderi and Ranthambore. Just as Rana Kumbha had done a generation ago, Rana Sanga ensured an honourable return of the Sultan to his Statecapital of Mandu. It seemed as if history was repeating itself. Bards have sung about how the Rana even tended to the wounds of the Sultan.

While Rana Sanga’s forays and victories on the battlefields continued, and historians have commented on his triumphs against the Delhi Sultans, the capture of a prince of Delhi and the sway of his authority right till Agra, the economic importance of Mewar as a State continued to grow in these politically chaotic times. Undoubtedly Mewar had over the centuries developed its own political identity, but in the thick of battles and political history, we often tend to ignore economic and social realities. The strategic importance of Mewar in western India is being emphasized and understood by modern audiences today. Mewar’s confrontations with Delhi Sultans, Sultans of Malwa and Gujarat, and later with the invading armies of Babur are best seen in this geostrategic context. As trade and commerce along the Gujarat coast became more vibrant, Mewar was ideally positioned to take advantage of it, being centrally located between northern India and western-central India. Needless to say, growing trade and traffic, tolls and taxes resulted in tensions which in turn led to battles between Mewar and the states surrounding it.

Through the 14th to 16th centuries CE, Mewar continued to command increasing commercial importance. Records from merchant families belonging to urban centres such as Ahad, Khamnor and Chittaur, besides Ghatiyala, Mandor, Hathundi, Jalor and Nadol, testify to the commercial transactions in this period.

Dariba, for its lead and zinc mines, Paldi, Jagat, Atapura and Shri Eklingji were ancient towns growing in prominence along the trade routes. The prosperous agrarian base of Mewar merits its own story as the land was yielding a spectrum of crops through the year, be it maize, wheat, barley, gram, oilseeds in the hilly regions or cotton and sugarcane in the river-fed plain areas.

Historical references abound of the use of araghatta or the Persian wheel even back in the 8th-9th centuries CE: clearly indicative of the royal and individual initiatives to promote and develop agriculture across the State.

In the eras of Rana Kumbha and Rana Sanga, the agricultural surplus provided sustenance to the State so often at war. The historical sagas of Mewar are now being contextualized in its geography and growing economy.

(The writer, a researcher writer on history and heritage issues, is a former deputy curator of Pradhanmantri Sangrahalaya)