1919.] The Rajput Kingdoms of Mediaeval Chhattisgarh. 259 
“kingdom as a private estate and vigilantly administered 
‘it by means of land bailiffs and a great staff of subordinate 
‘< officers. The Muhammadan conquerors found this arrange- 
“ment impracticable. The Hindu plan involved more scru- 
‘tiny and local knowledge than was possible with a non-resi- 
“dent prince, and the distant Emperors in Northern India 
‘administered less by officers than by intermediate proprie- 
“* tors between themselves and the cultivators. That is to 
“say, the land stewards who under the close watching of a resi- 
“prietors, This last part of the process has taken place under 
“ British rule. The growth of proprietary rights in Orissa 
‘‘ therefore divides itself into thre> stages; the Era of offices 
‘‘under the native Hindu Dynasties; a period of inchoate 
** Rights under the Muhammadan sige eee and the age of 
‘* Landlords under the English reign of law 
The Polity of Chhattisgarh was the — an- 
tithesis of that under the Hindu dynasties of Oriss far 
from the Rajput kings of Ratanpur and Raipur Sulosasicar 
with intermediaries between themselves and the cultivators 
of the soil they adopted and deliberately developed the tribal 
eee! “1 village headmen, chieftains of the Talug or Barhon 
of the Garh or Chaurasi, each of whom exercised 
the widest powers within his own sphere of action while the 
king remained a figurehead, little more than one of his own 
‘‘ Subordinate Chiefs.” And this system prevailed right down 
to the end of Haihaibansi rule. It was the destruction of the 
greater Lords or Zamindars by the Marathas and the expulsion 
by the first British administrators of the Maratha Patels who 
had slipped into the place of the old Taluqdars which, for the 
first time in the history of regi ooh omg brought the village 
headman into direct relations with the rulers of the country. 
And it is this which led to the grant to village headman of 
ee os rights in their villages at the ‘“‘ thirty years settle- 
ment ” 869. 
1 It is for others to decide how far the a 
system of mediaeval Chhattisgarh which I have described 
was peculiar to this part of India. I have neither the know- 
ledge nor the experience necessary to form a 
point. But I believe that the opportunity it offers for the 
exmination of an early form of indigenous rule is probably 
unique. 
It is indeed a curious circumstance that the outlines of 
his primitive organization should have 
—— persisted so long amid the social and 
political ebb and flow which was for centuries undermining it 
prior to the establishment of Maratha rule in the middle of the 
