iver Jumna in its
course. His contemporary and rival, Birju Baula, who, according to
popular belief, could split a rock with a single note, is said to
have learned his bass from the noise of the stone mills which the
women use in grinding the corn for their families.[3] Tansen was a
Brahman from Patna, who entered the service of the Emperor Akbar,
became a Musalman, and after the service of twenty-seven years,
during which he was much beloved by the Emperor and all his court, he
died at Gwalior in the thirty-fourth year of the Emperor's reign. His
tomb is still to be seen at Gwalior. All his descendants are said to
have a talent for music, and they have all Sen added to their
names.[4]

While Madhoji Sindhia, the Gwalior chief, was prime minister, he made
the emperor assign to his daughter the Bala Bai in jagir, or rent-
free tenure, ninety-five villages, rated in the imperial 'sanads'
[deeds of grant] at three lakhs of rupees a year. When the Emperor
had been released from the 'durance vile' in which he was kept by
Daulat Rao Sindhia, the adopted son of this chief,[5] by Lord Lake in
1803, and the countries, in which these villages were situated, taken
possession of, she was permitted to retain them on condition that
they were to escheat to us on her death. She died in 1834, and we
took possession of the villages, which now yield, it is said, four
lakhs of rupees a year. Begamabad was one of them. It paid to the
Bala Bai only six hundred rupees a year, but it pays now to us six
hundred and twenty rupees; but the farmers and cultivators do not pay
a farthing more--the difference was taken by the favourite to whom
she assigned the duties of collection, and who always took as much as
he could get from them, and paid as little as he could to her.[6] The
tomb of the old collector stood near my tents, and his son, who came
to visit it, told me that he had heard from Gwalior that a new
Governor-General was about to arrive,[7] who would probably order the
villages to be given back, when he should be made collector of the
village, as his father had been.

Had our Government acted by all the rent-free lands in our
territories on the same principle, they would have saved themselves a
vast deal of expense, trouble, and odium. The justice of declaring
all lands liable to resumption on the death of the present incumbents
when not given by competent authority for, and actually applied to,
the maintenance of religious, charitable,