[14]. [Bari Sādri, about 40 miles S.S.E. of Udaipur city.]
[15]. [Not found in Major Erskine’s or other official maps: in the Author’s map “Mhorun.”]
[16]. [Bassia latifolia, from the petals of which a coarse kind of spirits is made (Watt, Comm. Prod. 116 ff.: Yule, Hobson-Jobson, 2nd ed. 574 f.).]
[17]. [The banyan, ficus indica.]
CHAPTER 2
The Chief of Hīnta.
The discussions regarding Hinta were consequently very warm: the renunciation of ten valuable townships by the Maharaja Zorawar Singh of Bhindar, the head of the Saktawat clans, did not annoy the Bhindar chief so much as his failure to retain Hinta as one of his minor feuds: nay, the surrender of Arja, the price of blood, a far more important castle and domain, by his own brother Fateh Singh (the original acquisition of which sealed the conclusion of a long-standing feud), excited less irritation than the demand that Hinta should revert to the fisc. “It is the key of Bhindar,” said the head of the clan. “It was a Saktawat allotment from the first,” exclaimed his brother. “The Ranawat was an interloper,” cried another. “It is my bapota, the abode of my fathers,” was the more feeling expression of the occupant. It was no light task to deal with such arguments; especially when an appeal to the dictates of reason and justice was thwarted by the stronger impulse of self-interest. But in a matter involving so important a stipulation of the treaty, which required “that all fiscal possessions which, since S. 1822 (A.D. 1766), the commencement of the civil wars, had, by whatever means, passed from the Rana to the chieftains, should be reclaimed,” firmness was essential to the success of a measure on which [605] depended the restoration of order. The Saktawats behaved nobly, and with a purely patriotic spirit throughout the scene, when almost all had to relinquish important possessions. The issue was, that Hinta, with its domain, after remaining twelve months incorporated with the fisc, was restored to Zorawar, but curtailed of Dundia and its twelve hundred acres, which, though united to Hinta, was a distinct township in the old records. Having paid ten thousand rupees as the fine of relief, the chief was girt with the sword, and re-established in his bapota, to the great joy of the whole clan.
Hinta is burdened with the service of fourteen horse and fourteen foot; its rekh, or nominal value, in the patta-bahi, or ‘record of fiefs,’ being seven thousand rupees; but, in consideration of the impoverished condition of his estate, the chief was only called on to furnish five horse and eight foot. The present possessor of Hinta is an adoption from the chieftainship of Kun; but, contrary to established usage, he holds both Hinta and Kun, his parent fief, whereby he has a complex character, and conflicting duties to fulfil. As chief of Kun, he belongs to the third class of nobles, styled gol, and is subject to constant personal attendance on the Rana; as lord of Hinta, too, he has to furnish a quota to serve “at home or abroad!” Being compelled to appear at court in person, his quota for Hinta was placed under the charge of Man Singh (another of the Saktawat sub-vassalage), and was sent to the thana of little Sadri, on the Malwa frontier, to guard it from the depredations of the forester Bhil. But I was commissioned by the Rana to reprimand the representative of Hinta, and to threaten him with the re-sequestration of the estate, if he did not better perform the service for which he held it. In consequence of this remonstrance, I became acquainted with a long tale of woe; and Man Singh’s vindication from a failure of duty will introduce a topic worthy of notice connected with the feudal system of Mewar, namely, the subdivision of fiefs.
Man Singh Saktawat is a younger branch of the Lawa family, and one of the infants who escaped the massacre of Sheogarh, when Lalji Rawat and two generations were cut off to avenge the feud with Kurabar. In order, however, to understand the claims of Man Singh, we must go back to the period when Lalji Rawat was lord of Nethara, which, for some offence, or through some court-intrigue, was resumed, and bestowed on one of the rival clan of Chondawat. Being a younger branch of the Bansi family (one of the senior subdivisions of Bhindar), Lalji was but slenderly provided for in the family allotment (bat). On losing Nethara, he repaired to Dungarpur, whose Rawal gave him a grant of Sheogarh, an almost inaccessible fort on the [606] borders of the two countries. Thus compelled, through faction, to seek subsistence out of his native soil, Lalji renounced his loyalty, and with his sons, now Barwatias or ‘outlaws,’ resolved to prey upon Mewar. They now looked to Bhindar, the head of their clan, as their lord, and joined him in opposing their late sovereign in the field, levying blackmail from the estates of their rivals; or, when the influence of the latter sunk at court, and was supplanted by the clan of Saktawat, Lalji poised his lance in the train of his chief in defence of the throne. Thus passed his life, a chequered course of alternate loyalty and treason, until its tragical close at Sheogarh.[[2]]