Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/353

Rh on feudal conditions? What connection was there between these surrenders of lands and commendation—the practice, that is, of establishing a personal relation, distinguished by Hallam from the feudal relation of lord and vassal, a relation resembling that of patron and client under Roman law? These are questions in the history of European institutions, and a partial answer is given by Hallam. In the distracted state of society the weak needed the protection of the powerful. Hallam adds that the government needed some security for public order; but this remark seems rather to explain the use of certain practices found ready to hand by governments that succeeded in establishing themselves, than the causes which evolved political society out of anarchy. In reality these questions touch one of the most interesting problems in political philosophy, the origin of political power.

In studying these questions with an eye to the larger one in which they may be merged, I think you will agree with me that, there is Indian evidence which may be of use. We must not expect exact resemblances. I can quote no case in India where the tie between lord and vassal is in every strand the same as the tie between a feudal vassal and a feudal lord. I can point to no precise analogy to the practice of commendation. But in the India to which I mainly refer throughout this paper—the India of the times which preceded British rule—I can instance circumstances and motives at work tending to produce feudal types of society. They are the more instructive because the influences of the Roman empire and of the Catholic Church are both entirely absent.

Towards the end of the fifteenth or beginning of the sixteenth century the Yusafzais, Mahammadzais, and other Pathan tribes settled on the plains of the Peshawar district of the Punjab. They first begged and obtained land from the Dilazako, the previous occupants, and soon afterwards fought and expelled them. The Pathan families of these tribes located themselves in neighbouring villages, the rest of the tribal tract being held in common and used chiefly for pasturage. In course of time these Pathdns allowed cultivators from other parts, who had no share in the tribal inheritance, to settle amongst them. These settlers were called fakirs or hamsayas, persons under the same shade; and.