go to one of the other two for her. They are very much
disposed to fight with each other, but not less are they disposed to
unite against any third party, not of the same tribe. Braver men do
not, I believe, exist than the Rajputs of Bundelkhand, who all carry
their swords from their infancy.[11]

It may be said of the Rajputs of Malwa and Central India generally,
that the Mogul Emperors of Delhi made the same use of them that the
Emperors of Germany and the Popes made of the military chiefs and
classes of Europe during the Middle Ages. Industry and the peaceful
arts being reduced to agriculture alone under bad government or no
government at all, the land remained the only thing worth
appropriating; and it accordingly became appropriated by those alone
who had the power to do so--by the Hindoo military classes collected
around the heads of their clans, and powerful in their union. These
held it under the paramount power on the feudal tenure of military
service, as militia; or it was appropriated by the paramount power
itself, who let it out on allodial tenure to peaceful peasantry. The
one was the Zamindari, and the other the Malguzari tenure of
India.[12]

The military chiefs, essentially either soldiers or robbers, were
continually fighting, either against each other, or against the
peasantry, or public officers of the paramount power, like the barons
of Europe; and that paramount power, or its delegates, often found
that the easiest way to crush one of these refractory vassals was to
put him, as such men had been put in Germany, to _the ban of the
empire_, and offer his lands, his castles, and his wealth to the
victor. This victor brought his own clansmen to occupy the lands and
castles of the vanquished; and, as these were the only things thought
worth living for, the change commonly involved the utter destruction
of the former occupants. The new possessors gave the name of their
leader, their clan, or their former place of abode, to their new
possession, and the tract of country over which they spread. Thus
were founded the Bundelas, Pawars, and Chandels [_sic_] upon the ruin
of the Chandels of Bundelkhand, the Baghelas in Baghelkhand, or Riwa,
the Kachhwahas, the Sakarwars, and others along the Chambal river,
and throughout all parts of India.[13]

These classes have never learnt anything, or considered anything
worth learning, but the use of the sword; and a Rajput chief, next to
leading a gang of his own on