e for a
few more yeomen of the family among the retainers of the sovereign.

The people are in this manner, from the prince to the peasant,
indissolubly linked to each other, and to the soil they occupy; for,
where industry is confined almost exclusively to agriculture, the
proprietors of the soil and the officers of Government, who are
maintained out of its rents, constitute nearly the whole of the
middle and higher classes. About one-half of the lands of every state
are held on service tenure by vassals of the same family or clan as
the chief; and there is hardly one of them who is not connected with
that chief by marriage. The revenue derived from the other half is
spent in the maintenance of establishments formed almost exclusively
of the members of these families.

They are none of them educated for civil offices under any other
rule, nor could they, for a generation or two, be induced to submit
to wear military uniform, or learn the drill of regular soldiers.
They are mere militia, brave as men can be, but unsusceptible of
discipline. They have, therefore, a natural horror at the thought of
their states coming under any other than a domestic rule, for they
could have no chance of employment in the civil or military
establishments of a foreign power; and their lands would, they fear,
be resumed, since the service for which they had been given would be
no longer available to the rulers. It is said that, in the long
interval from the commencement of the reign of Alexander the third to
the end of that of David the second,[33] not a single baron could be
found in Scotland able to sign his own name. The Bundelkhand barons
have never, I believe, been quite so bad as this, though they have
never yet learned enough to fit them for civil offices under us. Many
of them can write and read their own language, which is that common
to the other countries around them.[34]

Bundelkhand was formerly possessed by another tribe of Rajputs, the
proud Chandels, who have now disappeared altogether from this
province. If one of that tribe can still be found, it is in the
humblest rank of the peasant or the soldier; but its former strength
is indicated by the magnificent artificial lakes and ruined castles
which are traced to them; and by the reverence which is still felt by
the present dominant classes of [_sic_] their old capital of Mahoba.
Within a certain distance around that ruined city no one now dares to
beat the 'nakkara', or