Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057345).pdf/48

 40 HAR The small proprietors. The principal feature of the Hardoi proprietary body is the enormous number of small owners. There are in Hardoi 1,569 villages not belonging to taluqdars; these cover 1,105,000 acres, and are owned by 21,758 proprietors, giving an average of fifty acres to each pro- prietor, of which two-thirds will he arable. Many of these proprietors, however, have brothers and cousins whose separate shares are not recorded. There are 823 zamindari villages, 728 pattidari, and 18 bhayachára. It is very strange why the ráj or the feudal chiefship system should not have gained ground in Hardoi. It almost seems as if it was owing to the climate that a bolder and more independent spirit animated the inhabit- ants of Unao, Hardoi, Lucknow, and southern Kheri than in eastera and Northern Oudh, the Tarai, and the trans-Gogra districts. Such large estates as do exist in Hardoi are purely the result of re- venue arrangements, even when the owners belong to powerful clans. A youoger scion of the Nikumbhs accumulated the estate of Atwa, another of the Chamar Gaurs that of Khajurahra, another of the Katiárs that of Dharmpur, another the Raikwár estate of Ruia; none of these men were rájas or considered their property as indivisible. The paucity of feudal lordships in Hardoi accounted for.—The rea- sons of this are obscure, It only removes the inquiry a stage further back to urge that the Chhattri clans were too numerous and too much in- termingled in Hardoi to admit of continuous domination by any one ment- ber of a single clan, It is quite true that in some cases the present pro- prietary bodies represent the Chhattri retainers who were settled indiscri- minately over the territory by the Moslem lords of Bilgrám, Shahabad, and Pibáni. When a mixed body of Brahman and Chhattri retainers has been scattered sporadically over a territory it is impossible to establish a ráj which shall have in itself any of the elements of cohesion or permanence; such are only the attributes of a feudal chiefship, which is coterminous with the allodial property of a numerous and powerfûl clan. Blood relation- sbip to the chief supplies the place of military discipline and preserves the principality from external foes and internal dissensions. Another solveut of feudal estates was the presence of large Musalman towns, such as Bilgram, Sandíla, Shahabad, and Sándi ; the existence of these Moslem military stations with their republican policy, fanaticism, and soldierly in- stincts was incompatible with the neighbourhood of a great Hindu ráj like that of Partabgarh, Gonda, Mitauli, or Morármau. Moslems, as soldiers of fortune, and as possessors of a faith which made all men equal, were bound to attack all whose wealth, Hindu faith, and noble station gave them a fatal prominence. Just as the Sayyads of Bilgram overturned the Som- bansi rája of that ilk, those of Sandíla the Pási chiefs, so did the Malihabad Pathans drive the Bais from their borders. Further, Hardoi was on the great highway from Delhi to Jaunpur and Bengal. Tall poppies do not grow by the roadside. These things account for large principalities never having flourished in Hardoi; they do not account for large clans like the Nikumbhs, Chamar Gaurs, Sakarwars, Panwárs never having elected a rája. They show that even when a clan had mastered a compact estate, the rája was regarded as an ornamental appendage which might or might not be added,