Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/53

 introduction:

xliii

hand, thereis perhaps hardly a case where the chieftak did not return after a dispossession of a few years, and recover,, if not his whole property, at any rate a large number of his villages. There were, in fact, two hostile powers, with interests diametrically opposed, but neither strong enough to gain a decisive victory. If, on the one hand, the king was powerless to evict the nobles, sO neither could they expel a king behind whom was the whole force of the British Government. Of the relations of the king to that Government it is unnecessary to write ; they are a matter of wellknown history, and may be found described at length in the pages of Mill and the blue-book which justified annexation. Of his re-^ lations to his subjects, the best idea will be gained from a short account of the principal measures which emanated from Lucknow, and a sketch of the social condition of the province when the king-

dom came

to an end.

perhaps worth while to sum up in a single paragraph the result of the preceding pages. Oudh had been many times conquered and owned monarchs of many diverse nationalities, but its history, down to the advent of the Muhammadans, had been a history of hegemonies. From that time it becomes the his-' The difference and its reason are tory of a foreign domination. not obscure. Even if the Hindu superiority in civilization was not greater over the earlier than the latter invaders, the Muhammadans differed from their predecessors in being animated by the bigotted zeal of a new and fervid religion. The earlier invaders' were in a very short time absorbed into the Hindu caste system^ adopted the religion of the country, and became an indistinguishThe Muhammadans could able portion of the national polity. ranks of their subjects. From the into received be join nor neither of the country is modified history the conquest their of the time element which refused to dominant of a new introduction by the centres in not the spontaneinterest the main and be assimilated, but the system, struggle of an homogeneous of a ous development against rulejs who were itself maintain to anterior civilization both it by interest and to opposed and spirit untouched by its It

is

religious feeling.

That struggle

it

has survived, but with the loss of every prin-

ciple of internal development— of everything which makes a In a short sketch like the above it was civiUzation valuable. unavoidable that none but the main features should be clearly

presented, at a sacrifice of the accuracy which depends on a minute attention to subordinate details. If the Hindu chiefs only have been mentioned it must not be forgotten that they were

nothing more than the highest point of a very complex structure,^