The highest rank in the system
Blochmann states it in passing, while arguing about something else entirely — the spread of Persian among Hindus — and the aside is the citation: “we saw on p. 341 that Man Singh was the first Commander of Seven Thousand.”
The number is worth holding still. Seven thousand *zat* was the top of the published scale for a noble. That a Kachhwaha reached it two generations after his grandfather entered service is the strongest single measurement of what the alliance was worth to the house that made it — and it is a measurement, not an impression, which is why this layer stores ranks as numbers.
Service
He first appears in Blochmann’s narrative of the Amber alliance as “his grandson Kunwar Man Singh”, joining Akbar in company with his father Bhagwant Das after the marriage at Sambhar. He served in Kabul, against the Yusufzais, and in Bengal, and was still in the field at the end of Akbar’s reign.
Blochmann notes that the principal events of his life from A.H. 997 to 1015 are given in Stewart’s history, and records — a detail with a long afterlife — that “the ground on which the Taj at A’grah stands, belonged to Man Singh.”