270 Lieul.-Colonel Tod on the Religious Establishments of Mewar. 



every influential domestic, takes advantage of ephemeral favour to increase 

 the endowments of his tutelary divinity. The Pundits Purdlians, or 

 Peshwa ministers of Satarra, are tlie most striking out of numerous 

 examples. 



In the dark ages of Europe the monks are said to have prostituted their 

 knowledge of. writing to the forging of charters in their own favour : 

 a practice not easily detected in the days of ignorance.* The Brahmans, in 

 like manner, do not scruple to employ this method of augmenting tlie wealth 

 of tiieir shrines ; and superstition and indolence combine to favour the 

 deception. There is not a doubt that the grand charter of Nat'hdwara 

 was a forgery, in which the prince's butler was bribed to aid ; and report 

 alleges that tlie Rana secretly favoured an artifice wliich regard to opinion 

 prevented liim from overtly promulgating. Although the copper-plate had 

 been buried under ground, and came out disguised with a coating of verdi- 

 grise, there were marks which proved the date of its execution to be false. 

 I have seen charters which, it has been gravely asserted, were granted by 

 Raw A upwards of J, 000 years ago ! Sucii is the alleged origin of one found 

 in a well at the ancient Brimpuri, in the valley of Udyapur (Oodipoor). If 

 there be sceptics as to its validity they are silent ones, and this copper-plate 

 of the brazen age is wortii gold to the proprietor.t A census t of the three 

 central districts of Mewar discovered that more than 20,000 acres of these 

 fertile lands, irrigated by the Beris and Bunas rivers, were distributed in 

 isolated portions, of which the mendicant (Mangta) castes had the chief 

 share, and which proved fertile sources of dispute to the husbandman and 

 the officers of the revenue. From the mass of title-deeds of every descrip- 

 tion by which these lands were held, one deserves to be selected, on account 

 of its being pretended to have been written and bestowed on the incumbent's 

 ancestor by the deity upwards of three centuries ago, and which has been main- 

 tained as a bond-Jide grant of Crisiina || ever since. By such credulity and 

 apathy are the Rajput states influenced : yet let the reader check any rising 



* Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. i. page 204. 



\ These forgeries of charters cannot be considered as invalidating the arguments drawn 

 from them, as we may rest assured nothing is introduced foreign to custom, in the items of 

 the deeds. 



J Suggested by the author, and executed under his superintendence, who waded through all 

 these documents, and translated upwards of a hundred of the most curious. 



jl See the Appendix to this paper, No. II. 



