256 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [N.S., XV, 
same leader who collected the ryots’ rents in times of peace 
would lead them out to fight in times of war. The same author- 
ity which protected the village from outside attack would 
dispense justice within it not st y in criminal matters but in 
civil and domestic disputes as w 
Thus, though the cal authority was there, it was 
always ‘held in check by the democratic tendencies of the pone 
life. The tribe, as we see so clearly in Macpherson’s pages, 
essentially individualistic. The patriarchs in their iifferent 
grades are never more than primus inter pares. Their authority 
is trammelled at every turn by custom and by the system of 
Panchayats. Their personal authority apart from the religious 
sanctity surrounding their position is very small. They are the 
pivots on which the system turns rather than the motive power 
which keeps it going. They are no more than elders among 
other elders who form an executive council so to speak for the 
disposal of ordinary business, all measures of extraordinary 
importance being laid before an assembly of the whole tribe. 
Now much of this democratic element seems in Chhattisgarh 
to have coloured the whole fabric of government throughout 
the period of Rajput rule. As has already been pointed out 
the very fact that each authority from the Raja downwards 
was content with a very limited sphere of direct control shows 
what regard they felt themselves compelled to show to every 
grade of society below them. Clearly there was some adjust- 
ment of political forces, some balance of political power, which 
limited all personal authority, a limitation of which the only 
explanation is to be found in the strength of tribal feeling. 
96. We find in fact in Chhattisgarh, as Sir A. Lyall found 
in the Rajputana states, the embryonic beginnings of consti- 
tutional rule. As the natural tribal life of the people broke up 
before the stream of immigrants, foreigners from Hindustan 
were introduced by the Haihaibansis as local chiefs and minor 
chiefs. But the system absorbed them, as is evident from the 
fact that the mixed tribal and feudal organization lasted till 
the end of the Rajput rule. Had the organization possessed 
any solid powers of self-defence against external attack it might 
have survived long enough to evolve some political system less 
barren than that of the ordinary oriental despotism of Mogul 
and Maratha. But this half-formed organism—its 
stunted by the extraordinary seclusion in which it had deve- 
loped—had no means wherewith to cope with a foreign inva- 
sion and its frame-work was shattered at once and irretrievably 
when the i 0 over-ran the country 
9 an therefore study the mediaeval —— of 
Chhattisgarh: Senet ope $ an antiquarian curiosity. It was up till 
1745 A.D. the loaianl pa miacpegine es the different social and aaron 
forces which from were brought to bear upon 
country. But the - sme nena swept it out of slower 
