1919.] The Rajput Kingdoms of Mediaeval Chhattisgarh. 255 
We may turn to the history of other Hindu States, to Tod’s 
Rajasthan or to standard works on Orissa, but in none of 
them is evidence forthcoming to indicate such delegation of 
authority wholesale from the Rajah to his chieftains and from 
the chieftains to the minor chiefs as that which I have des- 
cri in Ratanpur, Raipur, and Sambalpur. To find another 
camera of the kind we must refer. as Baden Powell tells us, 
o the earliest Vedic accounts” of Aryan custom, or must 
ceaka far afield among the Assamese or Tibeto-Burman races 
(see para. 60 above). Yet here in Chhattisgarh we have this 
primitive method of social and political organization persisting 
up to the first half of the 18th century in a country which had 
been under Rajput rule for over 7 centuries. The system was 
so well established as to pervade a wide stretch of country 
outside and around Chhattisgarh. It was the only method of 
people that even to-day we can see clear traces of it in the 
Zamindari Estates, while the settlement officers of the ’sixties 
actually saw the organization in working order i some of the 
remoter parts of the Raipur and Bilaspur Distric ; 
was rooted also in the social life of the Roan. It 
my mind the best idea of it is conveyed by calling it a system 
of feudalism superimposed on an earlier tribal organization. 
The feudal element was _tepresented by the hierarchy of per- 
was only one aspect of their relationship. Feudalism has 
been described as the creation of a condition of spina in 
which, the other bonds of society having been relaxed rec 
is necessarily had to the dependence of the smail upon the bereet: 
er, of the weak upon the stronger. In Chhattisgarh it was far 
otherwise. The feudal element was imposed by the conquering 
Rajput, upon a pre-existing tribal system which still persisted, 
and persisted with great vigour, for many centuries after the 
authority of the Haihaibansis was established. In parts of the 
country it actually outlived the feudal dynasty of these Rajput 
ki Being thus founded on a natural indigenous basis, the 
each in his degree ; and their control, so far as it was exercised, 
extended to every form of social and political activity. The 
