Page:The Marquess of Hastings, K.G..djvu/173

Rh define the boundaries which hitherto existed between the various states, and which, being hopelessly involved and indeterminate, were a fruitful source of bloodshed and anarchy. To give some idea of the confusion which existed in this respect, it may be mentioned that many of the Maráthá princes had rights over one and the same village, and not unfrequently did it occur that portions of a distant town, unconnected territorially with either of its sovereigns, were ruled by one chief and the remainder by another. Causes of dispute were therefore constantly at hand to produce among a turbulent people perennial feuds and unnecessary disturbances, and hence it became imperative that a new delimitation of rights and frontiers should at once be made by the paramount authority, to obviate for the future so extraordinary an invitation to discord. An example of this strange Maráthá system, which was incompatible with the rudiments of civil government, and the occasion of feuds and riot, is given by Lord Hastings: —

'The radical policy of the Maráthás was oddly avowed lately by an agent of Sindhia. The rights or possessions of the Maráthá chiefs are strangely intermixed with those of the different Rájás between the Jumna and the Narbadá. In one instance there was a district enveloped in the territories of the Rájá of Búndi, the annual revenue of which was