It is to be inferred that the regent must have well weighed the present good against the evil he incurred, in destroying in one moment the credit and efficacy of such an engine of power as the Pateli system he had established. The Council of Four maintained their post, notwithstanding the humiliated condition of their compeers; though their influence could not fail to be weakened by the discredit attached to the body. The system Zalim had so artfully introduced being thus entirely disorganized, he was induced to push still further the resources of his energetic mind, by the extension of his personal farms. In describing the formation and management of these, we shall better portray the character of the regent than by the most laboured summary; the acts will paint the man.

Before, however, we enter upon this singular part of his history, it is necessary to develop the ancient agricultural system of Haraoti, to which he returned when the pateli was broken up. In the execution of this design, we must speak both of the soil and the occupants, whose moral estimation in the minds of their rulers must materially influence their legislative conduct.

The ryot of India, like the progenitor of all tillers of the earth, bears the brand of vengeance on his forehead; for as Cain was cursed by the Almighty, so were the cultivators of India by Ramachandra, as a class whom no lenity could render honest or [536] contented. When the hero of Ayodhya left his kingdom for Lanka, he enjoined his minister to foster the ryots, that he might hear no complaints on his return. Aware of the fruitlessness of the attempt, yet determined to guard against all just cause of complaint, the minister reversed the mauna, or grain measure, taking the share of the crown from the smaller end, exactly one-half of what was sanctioned by immemorial usage. When Rama returned, the cultivators assembled in bodies at each stage of his journey, and complained of the innovations of the minister. “What had he done?” “Reversed the mauna.” The monarch dismissed them with his curse, as “a race whom no favour could conciliate, and who belonged to no one”; a phrase which to this hour is proverbial, 'ryot kisi ka nahin hai'; and the sentence is confirmed by the historians of Alexander, who tell us that they lived unmolested amidst all intestine wars; that “they only till the ground and pay tribute to the king,” enjoying an amnesty from danger when the commonwealth suffered, which must tend to engender a love of soil more than patriotism.^[5] It would appear as if the regent of Kotah had availed himself of the anathema of Rama in his estimation of the moral virtues of his subjects, who were Helots in condition if not in name.

Batai, or ‘division in kind,’ varies with the seasons and their products:

1st. The unalu, or ‘summer harvest,’ when wheat, barley, and a variety of pulses, as gram, moth, mung, til,^[7] are raised. The share of the State in these varies with the fertility of the soil, from one-fourth, one-third, and two-fifths, to one-half—the extreme fractions being the maximum and minimum; those of one-third and two-fifths [537] are the most universally admitted as the share of the crown. But besides this, there are dues to the artificers and mechanics, whose labour to the village is compensated by a share of the harvest from each cultivator; which allowances reduce the portion of the latter to one-half of the gross produce of his industry, which if he realize, he is contented and thrives.

The second harvest is the siyalu, or ‘autumnal,’ and consists of makkai or bhutta (Indian corn), of juar, bajra, the two chief kinds of maize,^[8] and til or sesamum, with other small seeds, such as kangni,^[9] with many of the pulses. Of all these, one-half is exacted by the State.

Such is the system of batai; let us describe that of kut.^[10] Kut^[11] is the conjectural estimate of the quantity of the standing crop on a measured surface, by the officers of the government in conjunction with the proprietors, when the share of the State is converted into cash at the average rate of the day, and the peasant is debited the amount. So exactly can those habitually exercised in this method estimate the quantity of grain produced on a given surface, that they seldom err beyond one-twentieth part of the crop. Should, however, the cultivator deem his crop over-estimated, he has the power to cut and weigh it; and this is termed lattha.

The third is a tax in money, according to admeasurement of the field, assessed previously to cultivation.

The fourth is a mixed tax, of both money and produce.

None of these modes is free from objection. That of kut, or conjectural estimate of the standing crop, is, however, liable to much greater abuse than lattha, or measurement of the grain. In the first case, it is well known that by a bribe to the officer, he will kut a field at ten maunds, which may realize twice the quantity; for the chief guarantees to honesty are fear of detection, and instinctive morality; feeble safeguards, even in more civilized States than Rajwara. If he be so closely watched that he must make a fair kut, or estimate, he will still find means to extort money from the ryot, one of which is, by procrastinating the estimate when the ear is ripe, and when every day’s delay is a certain loss. In short, a celebrated superintendent of a district, of great credit both for zeal and honesty [538], confessed, “We are like tailors; we can cheat you to your face, and you cannot perceive it.” The ryot prefers the kut; the process is soon over, and he has done with the government; but in lattha, the means are varied to perplex and cheat it; beginning with the reaping, when, with a liberal hand, they leave something for the gleaner; then, a “tithe for the khurpi, or 'sickle'”; then, the thrashing; and though they muzzle the ox who treads out the corn, they do not their own mouths, or those of their family. Again, if not convertible into coin, they are debited and allowed to store it up, and “the rats are sure to get into the pits.” In both cases the shahnahs, or field-watchmen, are appointed to watch the crops, as soon as the ear begins to fill; yet all is insufficient to check the system of pillage; for the ryot and his family begin to feed upon the heads of Indian corn and millet the moment they afford the least nourishment. The shahnah, receiving his emoluments from the husbandman as well as from the crown, inclines more to his fellow-citizen; and it is asserted that one-fourth of the crop, and even a third, is frequently made away with before the share of the government can be fixed.

Yet the system of lattha was pursued by the regent before he commenced that of pateli, which has no slight analogy to the permanent system of Bengal,^[12] and was attended with similar results,—distress, confiscation, and sale, to the utter exclusion of the hereditary principle, the very corner-stone of Hindu society.

CHAPTER 8

In S. 1840 (A.D. 1784), Zalim possessed only two or three hundred ploughs, which in a few years increased to eight hundred. At the commencement of what they term the new era (naya samvat) in the history of landed property of Kotah, the introduction of the pateli system, the number was doubled; and at the present time^[1] no less than four thousand ploughs, of double yoke, employing sixteen thousand oxen, are used in the farming system of this extraordinary man; to which may be added one thousand more ploughs and four thousand oxen employed on the estates of the prince and the different members of his family.

This is the secret of the Raj Rana’s power and reputation; and to the wealth extracted from her soil, Kotah owes her preservation from the ruin which befell the States around her during the convulsions of the last half-century, when one after another sank into decay. But although sagacity marks the plan, and unexampled energy superintends its details, we must, on examining the foundations of the system either morally or politically, pronounce its effects a mere paroxysm of prosperity, arising from stimulating causes which present no guarantee of permanence. Despotism has wrought this magic effect: there is not one, from the noble to the peasant, who has not felt, and who does not still feel, its presence. When the arm of the octogenarian Protector shall be withdrawn, and the authority transferred to his son, who possesses none of the father’s energies, then will the impolicy of the system become apparent. It [540] was from the sequestrated estates of the valiant Hara chieftain, and that grinding oppression which thinned Haraoti of its agricultural population, and left the lands waste, that the regent found scope for his genius. The fields, which had descended from father to son through the lapse of ages, the unalienable right of the peasant, were seized, in spite of law, custom, or tradition, on every defalcation; and it is even affirmed that he sought pretexts to obtain such lands as from their contiguity or fertility he coveted, and that hundreds were thus deprived of their inheritance. In vain we look for the peaceful hamlets which once studded Haraoti: we discern instead the ori, or farmhouse of the regent, which would be beautiful were it not erected on the property of the subject; but when we inquire the ratio which the cultivators bear to the cultivation, and the means of enjoyment this artificial system has left them, and find that the once independent proprietor, who claimed a sacred right of inheritance,^[2] now ploughs like a serf the fields formerly his own, all our perceptions of moral justice are shocked.

The love of country and the passion for possessing land are strong throughout Rajputana: while there is a hope of existence the cultivator clings to the bapota, and in Haraoti this amor patriae is so invincible, that, to use their homely phrase, “he would rather fill his pet in slavery there, than live in luxury abroad.” But where could they fly to escape oppression? All around was desolation; armies perambulated the country, with rapid strides, in each other’s train, “one to another still succeeding.” To this evil Kotah was comparatively a stranger; the Protector was the only plunderer within his domains. Indeed, the inhabitants of the surrounding States, from the year 1865, when rapine was at its height, flocked into Kotah, and filled up the chasm which oppression had produced in the population. But with the banishment of predatory war, and the return of industry to its own field of exertion, this panacea for the wounds which the ruler has inflicted will disappear; and although the vast resources of the regent’s mind may check the appearance of decay, while his faculties survive to superintend this vast and complicated system, it must ultimately, from the want of a principle of permanence, fall into rapid disorganization. We proceed to the details [541] of the system, which will afford fresh proofs of the talent, industry, and vigilance of this singular character.

Each plough or team is equal to the culture of one hundred bighas; consequently 4000 ploughs will cultivate 400,000 during each harvest, and for both 800,000, nearly 300,000 English acres. The soil is deemed poor which does not yield seven to ten maunds^[4] of wheat per bigha, and five to seven of millet and Indian corn. But to take a very low estimate, and allowing for bad seasons, we may assume four maunds per bigha as the average produce (though double would not be deemed an exaggerated average): this will give 3,200,000 maunds of both products, wheat and millet, and the proportion of the former to the latter is as three to two. Let us estimate the value of this. In seasons of abundance, twelve rupees per mauni,^[5] in equal quantities of both grains, is the average; at this time (July 1820), notwithstanding the preceding season has been a failure throughout Rajwara (though there was a prospect of an excellent one), and grain a dead weight, eighteen rupees per mauni is the current price, and may be quoted as the average standard of Haraoti: above is approximating to dearness, and below to the reverse. But if we take the average of the year of actual plenty, or twelve rupees^[6] per mauni of equal quantities of wheat and juar, or one rupee per maund, the result is thirty-two lakhs of rupees annual income.

Let us endeavour to calculate how much of this becomes net produce towards the expenses of the government, and it will be seen that the charges are about one-third gross amount [542].

We do not presume to give this, or even the gross amount, as more than an approximation to the truth; but the regent himself has mentioned that in one year the casualties in oxen amounted to five thousand! We have allowed one-fourth, for an ox will work well seven years, if taken care of. Thus, on the lowest scale, supposing the necessities of the government required the grain to be sold in the year it was raised, twenty lakhs will be the net profit of the regent’s farms. But he has abundant resources without being forced into the market before the favourable moment; until when, the produce is hoarded up in subterranean granaries. Everything in these regions is simple, yet efficient: we will describe the grain-pits.

Reputable merchants of the Mahajan tribe refrain from speculating in grain, from the most liberal feelings, esteeming it dharm nahin hai, ‘a want of charity.’ The humane Jain merchant says, “to hoard up grain, for the purpose of taking advantage of human misery, may bring riches, but never profit.”

According to the only accessible documents, the whole crown-revenue of Kotah from the tax in kind, amounted, under bad management, to twenty-five lakhs of rupees. This is all the regent admits he collects from (to use his own phrase) his handful (pachiwara) of soil: of course he does not include his own farming system, but only the amount raised from the cultivator. He confesses that two-thirds of the superficial area of Kotah were waste; but that this is now reversed, there being two-thirds cultivated, and only one-third waste, and this comprises mountain, forest, common, etc.

When the English Government came in contact with Rajwara, it was a primary principle of the universal protective alliance to proclaim that it was for the benefit of the governed as well as the governors, since it availed little to destroy the wolves without if they were consigned to the lion within. But there are and must be absurd inconsistencies, even in the policy of western legislators, where one set of principles is applied to all. Zalim soon discovered that the fashion of the day was to parwarish, ‘foster the ryot.’ The odious character of the tax was diminished, and an edict limited its operation to the farmer, the seller, and the purchaser; and so anxious was he to conceal this weapon of oppression, that the very name of lattha was abolished, and sawai hasil, or ‘extraordinaries,’ substituted. This item is said still to amount to five lakhs of rupees.

Thus did the skill and rigid system of the regent exact from his pachiwara of soil, full fifty lakhs of rupees. We must also recollect that nearly five more are to be added on account of the household lands of the members of his own and the prince’s family, which is almost sufficient to cover their expenses.

What will the European practical farmer, of enlarged means and experience, think of the man who arranged this complicated system, and who, during forty years, has superintended its details? What opinion will he form of his vigour of mind, who, at the age of fourscore years, although blind and palsied, still superintends and maintains this system? What will he think of the tenacity of memory, which bears graven thereon, as on a tablet, an account of all these vast depositories of grain, with their varied contents, many of them the store of years past; and the power to check the slightest errors of the intendant of this vast accumulation; while, at the same time, he regulates the succession of crops throughout this extensive range? Such is the minute topographical knowledge which the regent possesses of his country, that every field in every farm is familiar [545] to him; and woe to the superintendent Havaldar^[10] if he discovers a fallow nook that ought to bear a crop.

Yet vast as this system is, overwhelming as it would seem to most minds, it formed but a part of the political engine conducted and kept in action by his single powers. The details of his administration, internal as well as external, demanded unremitted vigilance. The formation, the maintenance, and discipline of an army of twenty thousand men, his fortresses, arsenals, and their complicated minutiae, were amply sufficient for one mind. The daily account from his police, consisting of several hundred emissaries, besides the equally numerous reports from the head of each district, would have distracted an ordinary head, “for the winds could not enter and leave Haraoti without being reported.” But when, in addition to all this, it is known that the regent was a practical merchant, a speculator in exchanges, that he encouraged the mechanical arts, fostered foreign industry, pursued even horticulture, and, to use his own words, “considered no trouble thrown away which made the rupee return sixteen and a half annas, with whom can he be compared?”^[11] Literature, philosophy, and excerptae from the grand historical epics, were the amusements of his hours of relaxation; but here we anticipate, for we have not yet finished the review of his economical character. His monopolies, especially that of grain, not only influenced his own market, but affected all the adjacent countries; and when speculation in opium ran to such a demoralizing excess in consequence of the British Government monopolizing the entire produce of the poppy cultivated throughout Malwa, he took advantage of the mania, and by his sales or purchases raised or depressed the market at pleasure. His gardens, scattered throughout the country, still supply the markets of the towns and capital with vegetables, and his forests furnish them with fuel.

So rigid was his system of taxation that nothing escaped it. There was a heavy tax on widows who remarried. Even the gourd of the mendicant paid a tithe, and the ascetic in his cell had a domiciliary visit to ascertain the gains of mendicity, in order that a portion should go to the exigencies of the State. The tumba barar, or ‘gourd-tax,’ was abolished after forming for a twelvemonth part of the fiscal code of Haraoti, and then not through any scruples of the regent, but to satisfy his friends. Akin to this, and even of a lower grade, was the jharu barar, or ‘broom-tax,’ which continued for ten years; but the many lampoons it provoked from the satirical Bhat operated on the more sensitive feelings of his son, Madho Singh, who obtained its repeal [546].

Though rigid in his observance of the ceremonies of religion, and sharing in the prevailing superstitions of his country, he never allows the accidental circumstance of birth or caste to affect his policy. Offences against the State admit of no indemnity, be the offender a Brahman or a bard; and if these classes engage in trade, they experience no exemption from imposts.

Such is an outline of the territorial arrangements of the regent Zalim Singh. When power was assigned to him, he found the State limited to Kelwara on the east; he has extended it to the verge of the Plateau, and the fortress which guards its ascent, at first rented from the Mahrattas, is now by treaty his own. He took possession of the reins of power with an empty treasury and thirty-two lakhs of accumulating debt. He found the means of defence a few dilapidated fortresses, and a brave but unmanageable feudal army. He has, at an immense cost, put the fortresses into the most complete state of defence, and covered their ramparts with many hundred pieces of cannon; and he has raised and maintains, in lieu of about four thousand Hara cavaliers, an army—regular we may term it—of twenty thousand men, distributed into battalions, a park of one hundred pieces of cannon, with about one thousand good horse, besides the feudal contingents.

But is this prosperity? Is this the greatness which the Raja Guman intended should be entailed upon his successors, his chiefs, and his subjects? Was it to entertain twenty thousand mercenary soldiers from the sequestrated fields of the illustrious Hara, the indigenous proprietor? Is this government, is it good government according to the ideas of more civilized nations, to extend taxation to its limit, in order to maintain this cumbrous machinery. We may admit that, for a time, such a system may have been requisite, not only for the maintenance of his delegated [547] power, but to preserve the State from predatory spoliation; and now, could we see the noble restored to his forfeited estates, and the ryot to his hereditary rood of land, we should say that Zalim Singh had been an instrument in the hand of Providence for the preservation of the rights of the Haras. But, as it is, whilst the corn which waves upon the fertile surface of Kotah presents not the symbol of prosperity, neither is his well-paid and well-disciplined army a sure means of defence; moral propriety has been violated; rights are in abeyance, and until they be restored, even the apparent consistency of the social fabric is obtained by means which endanger its security.

CHAPTER 9

Zalim’s policy was to create, as regarded himself, a kind of balance of power; to overawe one leader by his influence with another, yet, by the maintenance of a good understanding with all, to prevent individual umbrage, while his own strength was at all times sufficient to make the scale preponderate in his favour.

Placed in the very heart of India, Kotah was for years the centre around which revolved the desultory armies, or ambulant governments, ever strangers to repose; and though its wealth could not fail to attract the cupidity of these vagabond powers, yet, by the imposing attitude which he assumed, Zalim Singh maintained, during more than half a century, the respect, the fear, and even the esteem of all; and Kotah alone, throughout this lengthened period, so full of catastrophes, never saw an enemy [548] at her gates. Although an epoch of perpetual change and political convulsion—armies destroyed, States overturned, famine and pestilence often aiding moral causes in desolating the land—yet did the regent, from the age of twenty-five to eighty-two,^[1] by his sagacity, his energy, his moderation, his prudence, conduct the bark intrusted to his care through all the shoals and dangers which beset her course. It may not excite surprise that he was unwilling to relinquish the helm when the vessel was moored in calm waters; or, when the unskilful owner, forgetting these tempests, and deeming his own science equal to the task, demanded the surrender, that he should hoist the flag of defiance.

There was not a court in Rajwara, not even the predatory governments, which was not in some way influenced by his opinions, and often guided by his councils. At each he had envoys, and when there was a point to gain, there were irresistible arguments in reserve to secure it. The necessities, the vanities, and weaknesses of man he could enlist on his side, and he was alternately, by adoption, the father, uncle, or brother of every person in power during this eventful period, from the prince upon the throne to the brat of a Pindari. He frequently observed that “none knew the shifts he had been put to”; and when entreated not to use expressions of humility, which were alike unsuited to his age and station, and the reverence he compelled, he would reply, “God grant you long life, but it is become a habit.” For the last ten years he not only made his connexion with Amir Khan subservient to avoiding a collision with Holkar, but converted the Khan into the make-weight of his balance of power; “he thanked God the time was past when he had to congratulate even the slave of a Turk on a safe accouchement, and to pay for this happiness.”

Though by nature irascible, impetuous, and proud, he could bend to the extreme of submission. But while he would, by letter or conversation, say to a marauding Pindari or Pathan, “let me petition to your notice,” or “if my clodpole understanding (bhumia buddh) is worth consulting”; or reply to a demand for a contribution, coupled with a threat of inroad, “that the friendly epistle had been received; that he lamented the writer’s distresses, etc. etc.,” with a few thousand more than was demanded, and a present to the messenger, he would excite a feeling which at least obtained a respite; on the other hand, he was always prepared to repel aggression, and if a single action would have decided his quarrel, he would not have hesitated to engage any power in the circle. But he knew even success, in such a case, to be ruin, and the general [549] feature of his external policy was accordingly of a temporizing and very mixed nature. Situated as he was, amidst conflicting elements, he had frequently a double game to play. Thus, in the coalition of 1806-7, against Jodhpur, he had three parties to please, each requesting his aid, which made neutrality almost impossible. He sent envoys to all; and while appearing as the universal mediator, he gave assistance to none.

It would be vain as well as useless to attempt the details of his foreign policy; we shall merely allude to the circumstances which first brought him in contact with the British Government, in A.D. 1803-4, and then proceed to his domestic administration.