Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/54

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INTRODUCTION.

their position it would be erroneous to compare either the patriarch of an eastern tribe or the chieftain of a sept or clan. In their relations with their peasantry the family Either they had very few blood relations tie entered not at all. living in dependence on them, or, as was more common, the young-

In considering

them with

er branches of their families threw off allegiance altogether and In the complete absence of any preestablished separate states. tence of common origin with the mass of the people, they most nearly resembled the feudal lords of mediaeval Europe. But here again the resemblance is only superficial. What made the Oudh barons so strong is that they were a necessary element in the religious system of the country. Their race had been set apart by immemorial tradition and the sanction of all sacred literar ture as the wielders and representatives of Hindu power. The Chhattri ruler was as indispensable as the Brahman priest, and his might and magnificence were and are still gloried in by the people as the visible manifestation of their national prosperity. "With his destruction the national system is broken up, and it is this fact which commands for him the unquestioning obedience, and it may almost be said the enthusiastic afiection, of his subjects an obedience and afiection which can never be conciliated by the best rulers of a foreign race and religion. His position was then in its essential qualities that of the national king, however small his territories may have been, and his functions were distinctly royal. He was the natural receiver of the share of the cultivators' produce which formed the principal source of revenue ; he assessed and collected all the other taxes within his domain, the transit and ferry dues, the imposts on bazars, and the fees paid by the owners of stills and looms. It illustrates the blindness of the Muhammadans to their rights and duties as governors that they hardly ever contested these small taxes with him, but confined their rapacity to the one very lucrative source of income— the Eight up to annexation we find the rdjas who had then land. become taluqdars still collecting the minor taxes all over their domains, even in cases where they had lost nearly every one of Besides being the receiver of the retheir ancestral villages. venue, the Hindu chief called out the militia of his territory for war at his own sole will and with an authority which was never, disputed. He apportioned out the waste lands to tenants for, cultivation, decided the suits of his subjects in his cutcherry, and enjoyed, besides, a number of varying rights in wild produce resembling the rights attached to an English manor. The last hundred years contain the history of the conversion, of thQ raja into the taluqdar. With the exception that there is le^

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