300 ON ORISSA PROPER 



ces incurred in obtaining office, the most ruinous shifts and expedients 

 were perpetually resorted to, to wring a higher revenue from the lands, 

 whilst their resources declined in proportion to the tyranny exercised 

 over the cultivators. Notwithstanding that large military bodies were 

 posted all over the district, the Marhattas were quite unable to retain the 

 Khandaits and their paiks in any sort of order. Those of the sea shore 

 and the hills, not only laid the whole of the pergunnahs bordering upon 

 them under regular contribution, but frequently the Paiks of several small 

 killahs, combining together, advanced into the heart of the district, and 

 committed the most ruinous depredations up to the very walls of Cuttack. 

 Every year regularly after the Dassera, the Marhatta armies took the field 

 under the Subadar in person, and advanced into some part of the Raj- 

 wara, to chastise some insolence, or to enforce the demand for tribute. 

 When successful, the most sanguinary punishments and destructive ravages 

 were inflicted,— but they were frequently defeated, and their weakness 

 exposed, by the Paiks of killahs which now scarcely retain a name. Be- 

 sides, the continued marches and countermarches of a licentious disor- 

 derly Marhatta soldiery, in every direction across the province, were in 

 themselves evils of no trifling magnitude. Matters improved a little to- 

 wards the close of the Marhatta period, during the long administration of 

 Raja Ram Pundit; but if the ryots were in a small degree better protected 

 by his measures, he reduced, to the lowest stage of poverty and degrada- 

 tion, a powerful and important class, the hereditary Talukdars (now Ze- 

 mindars) of the Mogulbandi, who were ejected by him, very generally, from 

 the management of their Taluks, and left with scarcely even the means of 

 subsistence. 



As it would be impossible to render interesting to the general reader, 

 the never varying detail of oppression, mismanagement, and suffering dis- 

 played by the Marhatta annals, I shall content myself, in my account of this 

 fourth stage of Orissan history, with a brief enumeration of the successive 

 Subadars who obtained authority, as far as any can be made out amidsfc 



