Sation Ka Pagothia - Jauhar Place

Also called the Jauhar Place it was here that the most celebrated as well as frightening of all Rajput customs was performed. To the Rajputs, honour came before all else –even life. Quite often what was important to them during a battle was not victory or defeat, but how well they fought. By this code, rather than face defeat they performed their own last rites, dressed in saffron robes worn during weddings (a concept similar to the Japanese practice of ritual suicide or hara-kiri).


¤ The Grand Jauhar--Mass Self Immolation

From the Rajput’s rigid sense of honour arose the practice of jauhar or mass suicide by women when their men folk faced defeat in battle. They would dress themselves in their bridal finery and embrace their funeral pyres with a smile on their lips. The men would then fling open the castle gates and fight to the last man. This terrible but at the same time fascinating ritual took place exactly two and a half times in the history of Jaisalmer.

On the first occasion when Allauddin Khilji vanquished Jaisalmer 24,000 women sacrificed themselves in the fiery inferno. A few decades later when Firoz Shah Tughlaq invaded the city 16,000 women gave up their lives at the altar of honour. The last and half jauhar was the most intriguing of all. Amir Ali, the Afghan got Maharawal Lunakaran’s permission to let his begums (wives) visit the ranis (queens) of Jaisalmer. But he played a ‘Trojan horse’ trick on the Maharawal, and the palanquin he sent inside the fort was full of warriors, not women. When it seemed to the Maharawal that he was fighting a losing battle he slaughtered his womenfolk with his own hands as their was little time to arrange a funeral pyre. Hence, it is called a half - jauhar or Sako. The most ironical part of it was that immediately after the deed was done, reinforcements arrived in the shape of other princes and Amir Ali was defeated and blown up by a cannon ball.