Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057345).pdf/224

 216 KHE No doubt there were other ways in which taluqas were founded; these will be treated of further on. At present is only necessary to remark that the landed predominence of the Chhattri does not seem due to the greater valour of the clan—for Brahmans were as brave and more numerous, por to the natural inclination of the clan to put themselves under able and skilled guidance, for hardly* an instance is on record of a clan uniting to elect a chief for the first time on those grounds or any other; but the phenomenon is due to the inclination of the whole people for local governvient, and to their willingness when pressed by an alien ruler to risk the loss of a nominal independence. The Chhattris were the mesne lords in 87 out of 223 Oudh counties or muháls in the reign of Akbar. Afterwards they lost ground; they were depressed in the reign of Alamgir ; they were crushed by Asif-ud- daula and Saádat Ali. They rose again elastic and unbroken, and they now possess much about the same property and divided among the same clans as they held under Akbar. The history of words bears strong evidence to the above facts. Rajpuits, Thákurs, and Chhattris have become in common Oudh parlanco synonyms. The first means the son of a king, the second the lord, the master. The idea had taken root in the people's mind that every chief's son, and therefore every chief either is or becomes, by virtue of his position, a Chhattri, and that this racc alone is or should be the ruling one. The means of working out this in practice are at hand. Their sacred books in one place pronounce that rájas are of (personally) no caste, are above the rules of caste : nowhere could there be a better proof of the wonderful elasticity of Hinduism, of its being a living faith, tied down to no ancient formula from which it could not escape by a construction). Within the last three years several Indian rájas, who had no legitimate children, have brought into the Chhattri ranks sons by Musalman concut- bines, and, indeed, there arc very few of the Chhattri nobles whose position is not due to a similar application of this artful provision. It is apparent that where, under the ancient law and practice, every local chief and lord of the soil becamc ipso facto a Chhattri-Chhattris must soon have absorbed the entire property of the soil. In later times caste ceased to be flexible ; Káyaths and Kurmis romained so even when they acquired estates, but the bent of the people towards local government by Chhattris remained as strong as ever. Any peculiarly able and well born Chhattri was seen in the course of those turbulent times to become a rája by a kind of popular election. Certain to accumulate an estate, village after village was offered to him, with the more or less willing consent of the pro- prietors. By a kind of common law his estate was in his criminal and civil jurisdiction as far as Hindus were concerned; it ceased to be called direct Government property (khálsa); it became a principality; and the several villages became integral parts of one property. In a very few years they became welded together, the common subjection of the proprie- tors of the land to the rája became confused and then identical with his proprietorship of the whole land.
 * There are two.