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doubt credibly informed that in early days the Rájás contented themselves with their sixth'; and no doubt, as long as there was peace, and cultivation went on prosperously, there was little or no temptation to take more. But in more recent times it has always been the fact that the native rulers have taken to the full as much as they could get. But how?-by an arbitrary, elastic, method of alternate squeezing and loosing. Native rulers have always been ready to take the whole in good years, but have rarely shown themselves wanting in a perfectly unsystematic but practically-working sense of adaptation which does not let the pressure be overdone in a bad year1. Any definition or straightness of 'law' would have militated directly against this most obvious and characteristic feature of native rule.

And in all cases the restraint of 'custom' was felt by all classes, both ruler and ruled. The 'Ámil or other collector knew exactly how far the golden eggs could be multiplied without killing the goose that laid them.

When, therefore, we refer to Manu for Hindu ideas, or to the Hidayá and other Muhammadan text-books, it is not because these have, or ever had, any authority as practical statute-books-at any rate in the realm of public or constitutional law-but because the books of a time must more or less reflect the ideas of the people, and because, of course, a pious Hindu or a religious Muhammadan prince would always, to some extent, allow the value, as guides, of books written by sages or doctors of his semi-sacred law.

We may, therefore, quote the books, but remember that the only general law and constitution' of India was, that the people did what was the custom, and the king did what he chose, at least within the limits of the possiblelimits which the elastic Oriental mind has ordinarily well known how to keep.

1 I speak of course of the average fair-dealing ruler. There have been tyrants here and there, who seized

everything and left depopulated villages and ruined provinces; but these were exceptional.

§ 2. The Hindu State organization.

Now let us turn backward, and place ourselves, in imagination, in the days when a regularly established Hindu State was in working order, in very much the condition which is indicated rather than described in MANU'S Institutes.

The whole country occupied by the tribe or clan who selected and conquered the locality, was first divided out into large territories or divisions, and the central and largest (or at any rate the best) one was assigned to the head chief called 'Rájá1.'

·

Round about him, other estates, graduated in size, were occupied by lesser chiefs, heads of tribal groups or sections. These would be represented by such titles as 'Thákur,' 'Ráná,' 'Ráo,' or 'Bábú 2.' Every one of these held his estate on certain terms of service to the Rájá, which I will pass over without more detail than to say that a fine was paid on succession; that homage was done; that, on summons, the chief had to attend with his force; that he was expected to aid with such contributions as were, in times of difficulty, required. In some parts the most distant of the 'estates' were in hilly country; and here the chief was more independent than the rest, and was expected to keep the passes, and prevent the descent of neighbouring hostile tribes and robbers to harass the dominions of the Rájá and his chiefs.

Inside the Rájá's domain or khálsa,' as the later Rájputs and also the Sikhs called it, the greater portion of the land was directly under the control of the king's officers-a graded series of district and village authorities—and a certain portion of it was held or managed under royal

1 See Sterling's account of Orissa kingdoms in Asiatic Researches, vol. XV. p. 220. In every part of India, it would seem that under the Hindus, the domains reserved for the Crown constituted, if not the largest, at least the most valuable and productive shares of the whole

territory.'

2 This term, now commonly employed to designate a clerk in office, really applies to a native gentleman of wealth and position, and primarily (in some places) indicates the sons, nephews, &c., of the Rájá or other chief.

grant or assignment, by courtiers, ministers of State, chief judges, and military officers, as well as by the younger sons and dependants of the royal house.

The Rájá enjoyed two main sources of revenue :—

I.—The first was the throne-right (spoken of as the 'gaddí' or state cushion) with a right to certain tolls and taxes, transit duties on trade, excise, rights in the forests (if there were any), and taxes from the artisan and trading classes.

It is possible that if the other chiefs were not powerful, these royal rights might extend over their domains as well. This group of rights was indivisible, or went to the successor of the Rájá,-always the eldest son or next heirmale.

II. The second source of revenue was the share in the grain produce of every bíghá of cultivated land, already spoken of.

It will be observed that just as the Rájá took this share for his own 'khálsa' or demesne lands, so did the separate chiefs in their estates: the Rájá took no grain-share in them 2. Exactly in the same way, where the Rájá made a grant (or in later days a sale) of a part of his own demesne lands to a courtier or a general, &c., the grantee took the share (and perhaps some of the other taxes and tolls) which would otherwise have gone to the king.

This fact is at the bottom of a great deal connected both with land-tenures, and the land-revenue. And we have already seen how, from the Rájá's grants and from the break-up of the territories, village landlord communities have arisen.

Of course the fate of the ancient Hindu States has been very various. The smaller ones have often fallen out of rank; the 'Royal' family has quarrelled; the estate has split up like those just mentioned, and dissolved into a

1 See Chap. IV. p. 128.

2 The reader will bear this in mind, because forgetfulness of it has been the source of a great deal of nonsense written in former days about there never having been any Royal revenue-share levied, as in

Coorg, Malabár, &c., the fact being that the mistake arose from looking at lands which formed chiefs' estates, from which the Rájá as tribal chief never did take a royalty, whether in Malabár or in any other country where Rájás existed.

number of village-landlord families, only known from the rest of the village cultivators by their higher caste and memories of a more dignified origin in the remote past. In other cases the old Hindu kingdoms were either subdued or destroyed before the conquest,-whether of the Afghán, the Mughal, the Maráthá, the Sikh, or the armies of Clive or Wellesley or Lake.

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In this case, the Rájá's grain-share passed on to the conqueror, or succeeding power. If the Rájá had been killed in battle, or had fled, there was no one to share or diminish it; it was simply collected by the State machinery of the conquering king or emperor; if the Rájá survived under the conqueror as a subordinate noble, he was probably installed by royal grant as a Zamíndár' or 'Taluqdár'; and continued to collect the grain-share as before, but had now to pass on a portion-perhaps the greater portion1-to the treasury of the conqueror; and he made his own wealth by other privileges which in the end left him richer than before; he was allowed to cultivate the waste, and take the profits for himself; he was gradually allowed to bargain with the State for a fixed revenue payment and keep the difference between that contract sum and what he could collect from the 'raiyats.' Then it was that the idea of the right of reassessing the revenue-share from time to time, ill-defined as that practice was, inevitably occurred to him; and when, under our own rule, the title in the land was secured to the Zamíndárs, the power of raising the assessment soon developed into the landlord,' and his right of 'enhancing' the rents,' which proved such a source of burning discussion for after years.

But this is to anticipate; we must first consider how the Hindu Revenue Administration was conducted, and how the system fell in with Muhammadan ideas, and was adopted by the Mughal conquerors, and has come down, in a modified form, to the British Government.

When, in later days, in Bengal, the emperor's deputy allowed the surviving Rájás (as well as modern officials and farmers) to collect the

local revenue, the theory was (and at first the practice) that ninetenths of the whole collections were passed on to the State treasury.

83. The Internal Administration.

Taking what was probably the most regularly governed territory, we may look within the Rájá's demesne to see how it was managed. The initial grouping of lands is of course the village,' and to this unit attention was mostly paid, because if the grain collection went wrong there, nothing else would go right. In the last chapter we have fully gone into the question of the origin of villages, and shown how cultivation could only be done by aggregates of men who were united in some sort of bond for mutual society and protection. Whether the villages were actually primæval settlements of tribes, allotting the lands according to custom, or whether they were later foundations by colonists and settlers, it was natural that some one man should take the lead as the representative of the village; and as the collection of the king's share at the threshingfloor required watching, that headman was naturally drawn more and more into connection with the State, and became in fact a State officer. No wonder, then, that the office soon assumed an hereditary character, and that, what with the importance his State connection gave him, and the emoluments which he was allowed to enjoy, the headman became an institution so useful, that he survived where many other institutions gradually disappeared. The fact that every village from which the king drew a share, had a headman-alluded to in the early books as the 'grámádhikár,' and later on by a multitude of names (pátel,' mandal,' 'pradhán,' and later still, 'muqaddam' and 'lambardár)-became a recognized universal fact of village organization.

But the headman required the assistance of a person who could write and do sums and keep the accounts of the collection, and register facts regarding the land and its cultivators; so that a village patwárí'-the 'grámalekhak (village-writer) of ancient days-became equally a necessary part of the system.

The natural land-unit of the revenue system being the