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Rh the eighteenth century, set up for themselves as independent chiefs—were theoretically paid for the sake of protection. In practice these fees were levied by the Poligars from defenceless villagers as the price of forbearing to plunder them. The Poligar sent out armed men from his fort and demanded payments in money, grain, cattle, and other things. If payment was refused, the villagers were flogged or tortured, or kidnapped or killed. Suppose demands of this kind to be regularly made over a certain extent of territory within easy reach of expeditions from the fort, is it not plain that in time they might turn into a tax, and that the robber-chief might become a Raja of just such a manorial principality as I have described from the Punjab hills? The same connection between oppression and protection is discernible in an entirely different part of India, in Rajputtaa, which is as unlike the Carnatic of last century as the Palestine of Judah and Israel is unlike Merovingian France. Rekwali in Rajputana is a name for a kind of blackmail. In explaining it Col. Tod quotes Lord Lovat's Report on the Highlands of Scotland in 1724: "When the people are almost ruined by continual robberies and plunders, the leader of the band of thieves, or some friend of his, proposes that, for a sum of money annually paid, he will keep a number of men in arms to protect such a tract of ground, or as many parishes as submit to the contribution. "When the terms are agreed upon he ceases to steal, and thereby the contributors are safe; if anyone refuses to pay, he is immediately plundered." Rekwali may be described as contributions paid, lands granted, or services rendered in consideration of protection. There were payments in money or kind at harvest; personal services in agriculture, the husbandman finding implements and cattle, and attending when ordered; fees on marriages; dishes of good fare at wedding feasts; and portions of fuel and provender. Sometimes the person protected sank into a position hardly distinguishable from that of a serf. Often the arrangement was based on the grant by the villagers to the chief of their ancient proprietary rights in a portion of their lands. Tod identifies rekwali with the salvamenta of Europe, paid by those who had preserved their allodial property to insure its defence. But the surrender of lands in certain cases to the chief, though the chiefs did not restore them, connects rekwali with the process of feudalisation; and the fact that it