[5] Rani Padmini, the supposed 14th-century queen of the Rajput kingdom of Chittor – it is not clear if she ever existed[6] – had committed jauhar rather than be captured by the invading Alauddin Khalji, the Sultan of Delhi.
[7] More prosaically, Alauddin reorganised the revenue systems in his sultanate, thereby ruining the fortunes of intermediaries who were previously responsible for the collection of tax.
Combining the loss of their finances with their defeats at the hands of invaders, the Rajputs took recourse to epic poetry to establish a sense of pride.
[8] From 2005, Sreenivasan investigated the lives of women and children servants among elite Rajput clans between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, as part of a collaborative research project on South Asian slavery.
These were exchanged as dowries in a competitive display of wealth, not only to promote interstate alliances but also to elevate the prestige of households.