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some unlucky taint which may give you much trouble in this existence and the next.

Whether the new ideas encouraged (if not generated) everywhere by English rule in India are not dissolving, in their turn, the castes as well as the tribes, may be a remote speculation worth hinting at. The spread of what we may call mysticism in certain parts of India has been much noticed by the natives themselves, and by very competent observers among the missionaries. One of these last (Mr. Shoolbred, of Ajmere) writes, in a valuable paper upon religious and social movements, that "the surface-drifting of the semi-Hinduized classes toward orthodoxy is nothing in comparison with the current which is setting in among the people toward sects and secret societies that disown caste prejudices about bodily purity and distinctive ceremonial." This tendency of religious enthusiasm to shake off the restraints of traditional external forms, and to prefer the vague disorderly suggestions of spiritual freemasonry and inward grace, is a known symptom of the decline of priestly influence, and of the rise of a kind of democracy in religion, which, if it spreads, will soon disintegrate the Indian caste.

This very condensed account of the condition and tendencies of social matters in an outlying part of India may possibly be useful to those who are working by the comparative method at the foundations of history and sociology generally. It may have some bearings upon much that has recently been written about early institutions in Europe. Here in India, for instance, can still be seen primitive sets of people who never came under the arbitrary despotism of a single man, and among whom no written law has ever been made since the making of the world. Yet these people are not loose incoherent assemblages of savages, but are very ancient societies, restrained and stringently directed by custom and usage, by rules and rites irresistible. "The Greeks," writes Mr. Freeman, "were the first people who made free commonwealths, and who put the power of the law instead of mere force and the arbitrary will of a single man ;" and whatever impression this passage might convey to the students for which it was written, others might hastily infer from it that in the ancient world men were all

lawless or under despotisms until the Greeks invented free institutions. Perhaps it may be suggested that what the Greeks did invent is political citizenship and rules of conduct under State sanction. Between the clans and the commonwealths the difference is not so much between lawlessness and free institutions, as between the primitive man, whose social and political customs are as much part of his species as the inherited habits of an animal, and the highly civilised man, who consciously chooses his own laws and form of government according to expediency and logic. Politically speaking, the extremes of two systems may be seen by contrasting those tribal States of Central India which are presided over each by a chief of the eldest family of the oldest stock in the clan, with the United States of America, founded upon and held together by a written constitution setting forth abstract rights. In the Indian State we have the rigid circle of affinity hedging in the political privileges of a dominant clan, and resting upon close marriage rules; in the American State we see citizenship open to any foreigner who applies for it, absolute equality before a written code, and often a most liberal law of divorce. Whether across the wide interval which separates the earliest and latest phases of Aryan institutions may still be traced any connected filiation of ideas is a speculation not to be entered upon here; possibly the theory that the peculiar demise of the French kingship followed a rule of the law of inheritance among the Salian tribe, is the most notable European instance of the distorted survival of a tribal custom.

"The forms of the Juden Gesse, rousing the sense of union with what is remote, set him musing on the two elements of our historic life which that sense raises into the same region of poetry-the faint beginnings of ancient faiths and institutions, and their obscure lingering decay." This is what was suggested to Daniel Deronda by the scene in the synagogue at Frankfort; and the passage touches the way of thought into which Englishmen are led in India, by looking around them at the actual institutions and worships of a primitive people, and endeavouring to see clearly among what manner of men they find themselves. One seems to be catching at the beginnings of

European nations, and to discern a little less dimly what the ancient generations of one's own folk were thinking about in the foretime, and what motives or conceptions, now extinct in Western Europe, presided over the infancy of some of the ideas and institutions which lie at the roots of European society.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE RAJPUT STATES OF INDIA.

Political institutions of Rajpútána preserved by the English-Description of the country called Rajpútána, its boundaries, and the States which it includes-Origin and development of Rajpút States and the dominant clans-Brief retrospect of their history during the time of the Moghal empire; connection of the ruling families with the Emperors-Effect on Rajpútána of period of anarchy during 18th century when the empire collapsed-The States rescued from destruction by the English Government-Extinction of predatory rights by Lord Hastings, and his establishment of permanent peace-Examination of the constitution of a Rajpút State and of the nature of its organization : the Chief is the head of a clan, and the descendant of the State's founderRules of succession to chiefship and customary practice of selection; the hereditary right subject to condition of fitness-Policy of English Government in disputed cases-Subordinate chiefs and landholders, their rights and obligations-Tenures not feudal, but according to tribal usages and privileges of kinship-Primogeniture-Marriage customs-Religious movements-Fosterage-Remarks on the character and durability of these institutions.

ONE of the popular notions in England and Europe regarding the establishment of the English empire in India is that our conquests absorbed nationalities, displaced long-seated dynasties, and levelled ancient nobilities. These are some of the self-accusations by which the average home-keeping Englishman justifies to himself the indulgence of sitting down and casting dust on his head whenever he looks back upon the exploits of his countrymen in India-an attitude which is observed by foreigners with suspicion or impatience according to their insight into English character. Yet it would be easy to prove that one important reason why the English so rapidly conquered India was this, that the countries which fell into our hands had no nationalities, no long-seated ruling dynasties, or ancient aristocracies, that they had, in fact, no solid or perma

nent organization of the kind, but were politically treasure trove, and at the disposal of the first who, having found, could keep. The best proof that in these countries the English destroyed no organized political institutions is the historical fact that in the countries which they annexed none such had been left for them to destroy. On the other hand, where indigenous political institutions of long standing do still exist, it is the English who have saved them from destruction; and this may best be illustrated by giving some description of the only considerable region of India in which such institutions still practically survive, having resisted for centuries the incessant attacks of Mahomedan invaders, and the crushing weight of the Moghal empire. That these institutions did not at last topple over and disappear toward the end of that long storm of anarchy which swept the length and breadth of India for a hundred years after the death of the Emperor Aurungzeb in 1707, is mainly due to their protection at the last moment by the English, who may thus claim at least the credit of having rescued the only ancient political structures in Northern India which their predecessors had been unable to demolish.

The region to which we refer is that which is now called, in the administrative nomenclature of the Indian empire, Rajpútána; and, by the natives of India, Rajasthán, or the country of the Chiefs. It is the region within which the pure-blooded Rajpút clans have maintained their independence under their own chieftains, and have in some instances kept together their primitive societies, ever since the dominion of the Rajputs over the great plains of North-Western India was cast down and broken to pieces seven centuries ago by the Musulmán irruptions from Central Asia. The first Musulmán invasions found Rajpút dynasties ruling in all the chief cities of the North and over the rich Gangetic plains Eastward to the confines of modern Bengal-at Lahore, Delhi, Kanauj and Ayodhya. Out of these great cities and fertile lands the Rajput Chiefs were driven forth Southward and Westward into the central regions of India, where a more difficult country gave them a second line of defence against the foreigners. And

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