siege narrative

ContestedThe 1303 siege is documented by Amir Khusrau, who marched with the army, and by Barani, and neither names a queen or a motive of beauty; a 1302 inscription independently attests Ratnasimha ruling Mewar [ratnasimha-dariba-epigraphy-via-wikipedia]. A beauty motive is told independently of Jayasi in the Ain-i-Akbari, on the authority of 'ancient chronicles' [ain-akbari-jarrett-sarkar-1949-p274-276], but the name Padmini first appears in Jayasi's poem of 1540, and outside poetry only in Nainsi's Khyat of the 1660s [nainsi-khyat-part1-p14]. Historians who read these sources disagree about the facts, not only the telling — Ojha states the queen as fact [ojha-udaipur-itihas-1928-p182], Lal allows her only as a possibility [lal-khaljis-1950-p129-130] — so the page rests at contested.