Rajput Honour
During the reign of Sikandar Lodi in 1516, a band of Pathans carried off a hundred and forty Rajput women during the Hindu festival of Teej. Incensed Surajmal took it upon himself to take revenge for Rajput honour, which he did by vanquishing the ‘northern barbarians' but at the cost of his own life. His heir Rao Ganga Singh who ruled for the next sixteen years was part of the last confederacy made by the Rajputs for national independence. As the Mughal Babur blazed across the Indus and defeated Ibrahim Lodi in the first battle of Panipat in 1526, the Rajputs united in order to drive out the foreigner. Ganga Singh along with the one-eyed Rana Sanga of Mewar met Babur in the battle of Khanua in 1528. However the Rajputs were routed and from then on Mughal power in India for the next two centuries was assured.

A Narrow victory
However Babur found nothing to tempt him in the unproductive lands of Marwar and Jodhpur managed to retain its autonomy. In fact under Raja Maldeo, Jodhpur managed to extend its sphere of influence considerably in the latter half of the 16 th century. He acquired Nagore and Ajmer and later Jalore, and even managed to dispossess Bika's (founder of Bikaner ) heirs from supreme power in Bikaner . Meanwhile Sher Shah Suri, the Afghan had dispossessed Mughal emperor Humayun from the throne of Delhi , when he fled to Marwar to seek refuge but received a cold shoulder from Maldeo. However, Maldeo received no advantage from his inhospitality, and Sher Shah possibly out of insecurity from his southern neighbour marched on Marwar with 80,000 men to be met by a Rajput army of fifty thousand. Where thanks to the old Rajput vice of squabbling with each other the Delhi Sultan achieved a narrow victory. But it was a ‘narrow victory' at best as the Sultan himself remarked afterwards: "I nearly lost the empire of Hindustan for a handful of barley."

Interesting thing is that the Jodhpur coat-of- arms apart from depicting the sacred kite of goddess Durga and the Rathore war cry Ranbanka Rathore (Rathore invincible in battle) also portrays a handful of barley- signifying Sher Shah's famous words. Maldeo was destined to outlive the Sher Shahi dynasty but Humayun returned from exile to reclaim his kingdom and after his death in 1556 it was the 13 year old Akbar (destined to become one of the greatest of Indian kings) who ascended the Mughal throne.

Jodhpur Placates Akbar
Akbar clearly had a score to settle as the non-cooperation of Jodhpur had led him to spend his childhood in faraway Amarkot rather than the princely comforts of Delhi and he invaded Marwar in 1561 and captured both Jodhpur and the Nagore fort. The two forts he handed to Rai Singh of Bikaner now independent of Jodhpur . Maldeo was forced to swallow his pride, and tried to win over Akbar by sending him gifts through his second son Chandra Sen. However all the wiles of Chandra Sen failed to sway the Akbar and ultimately it was his elder brother Udai Singh who managed to ingratiate himself with the emperor. The unkindest cut of all came when he was forced to pay homage to his elder son Udai Singh, who was appointed by Akbar, and this ended the freedom of Jodhpur which became a vassal state of the Mughals.