Administrative and Revenue Systems in Medieval Rajasthan

Where this sits

This closes the syllabus line that began with the major dynasties and continued through resistance and collaboration. It is the least glamorous of the three and the most rewarding, for a reason worth stating plainly.

Battles are contested; account books are not. Almost every episode in the previous two chapters survives in two incompatible tellings. This topic rests on pattas, bahis and revenue surveys, written by officials for administrative use rather than for posterity, and it is therefore the most secure ground in the whole unit. It is also where the marks are cheapest, because the vocabulary is finite and most candidates never learn it properly.

The single most important thing on this page is that there were two systems, not one. The Mughal empire had its assessment methods; the Rajput states had their own machinery, their own land-tenure categories and their own vocabulary. The two interlocked but were not the same, and the commonest error in this topic is answering a Rajput-state question with a Mughal term. This chapter keeps them in separate sections for that reason.

1. Before the Mughal frame: what the inscriptions record

The page below opens in 1580. Rajasthan had a revenue vocabulary six centuries older than that, and it survives in a form that cannot be argued with: land-grant inscriptions on stone, dated, and edited by epigraphists who printed the text alongside the translation. Two of them come from within modern Rajasthan.

The Rajor inscription was found near the temple of Nilakantha Mahadeva among the ruins of Paranagar, south of the village of Rajor or Rajorgadh, in what its editor gives as the Rajgarh district of the Alwar State. It records a grant by Mathanadeva, of the Gurjara-Pratihara lineage, residing at Rajyapura, and it is dated in words and figures to the 13th of the bright half of Magha, Vikrama year 1016, which F. Kielhorn worked out as Saturday, 14 January A.D. 960.

The Partabgarh inscription was found on a platform beside a stepwell at Partabgarh in southern Rajputana and was presented to the Rajputana Museum, Ajmer. It consolidates a series of grants on one stone, the principal one issued by the Pratihara king Mahendrapala II of Mahodaya in Samvat 1003, and it was edited by Gaurishankar Hirachand Ojha.

A note on the two places. Rajor and Paranagar lie in the Rajgarh area of Alwar. Partabgarh is Pratapgarh, which since the 2023 reorganisation is its own district, carved out of Chittorgarh. The older editions name princely states, not districts, and this page keeps their wording when quoting them.

The words the grants actually use

A grant of a village transferred not the soil but the stream of dues attached to it, so the scribe had to list them. The Rajor grant hands over Vyaghrapataka village "up to its proper boundaries, the grass and pasture land, with the udranga, with its rows of trees, with its water, with the bhoga and mayuta income, with all customary and not customary, fixed and not fixed receipts, the shares (bhaga) of all sorts of grain, the khala-bhiksha, prasthaka, skandhaka, marganaka, the fines, ten offences, gifts, treasures and deposits" and, in a clause that has kept historians of the Gurjaras busy ever since, "together with all neighbouring fields, cultivated by the Gurjaras".

Two of those repay a second look. Udranga and uparikara are a pair, and the pair sorts permanent tenants from temporary ones, not landowners from cultivators. And bhaga-bhoga is a compound of two different things: bhaga is the king's share of the crop, bhoga the periodical supplies of firewood and flowers. Both points are routinely mangled in circulated notes, which is why they are set out here from the glossary rather than paraphrased.

Then there is what the editor refused to say. Of the run of revenue terms in lines 11 to 13 of the Rajor grant, Kielhorn wrote flatly that they are "a number of revenue-terms, the exact import of which is not apparent", and of khala-bhiksha, prasthaka, skandhaka and marganaka that "the exact meaning of this and the following terms I do not know". The one gloss he ventured is that khala-bhiksha means "the alms of the threshing floor", khala being the threshing floor. Anyone who tells you these four were taxes on barbers, washermen and shoulder-loads is glossing words the editor of the inscription declined to gloss. Carry the words. Do not carry the meanings.

The market tolls at the bottom of the same stone

The last two lines of the Rajor inscription assign a set of additional tolls to the temple, and they are the closest thing this period offers to a rate schedule:

Kielhorn suggests, without insisting, that the word kattadana in that passage may stand for mandapika or sulka-mandapika, the customs house. Read the schedule against section 6 of this page. Sayar, the Jaipur name for customs and chungi, is doing in the eighteenth century what these tolls were doing in the tenth, and a levy on a shop by the month is recognisably the same instrument.

The territorial ladder the pargana replaced

The Partabgarh inscription addresses the residents of a village "in the western Pathaka (district) of Dasapura", and the Rajor grant places its village in the Vamsapotaka bhoga. So a pathaka and a bhoga are both units above the village and below the kingdom, and the glossary's definition of pathaka as a division "like a Pargana of later days" is the sentence to remember. The pargana did not arrive on empty ground. It took over a job an older unit was already doing.

The officers are named on the same stones. The Partabgarh grant styles Madhava a Tantrapala-Mahasamanta-Mahadandanayaka, a Tantrapala being an officer in charge of administration, rendered by the editor as great feudatory, great governor and Chargé d'Affaires. A Mandalika is the ruler of a mandala or district and a feudatory title. An agrahara is a rent-free holding, characteristically granted to Brahmins. A Karanika is a scribe and writer of legal documents.

And the pancakula is the one to hold on to. A standing board of five or more, arbitrating disputes and administering the customs house and the estates of those who died without heirs, is a local body with a defined jurisdiction. The Rajor grant transfers exactly that last item, the aputrikadhana, along with the village. Two independent tenth-century records, one a definition and one a transaction, describing the same institution from opposite ends.

One honest caution. The chain "kingdom to mandala to vishaya to pathaka to khetaka" circulates as though the Partabgarh inscription laid it out. It does not. Ojha's edition names a pathaka of Dasapura and contains no vishaya and no khetaka at all. The units are all real and all epigraphically attested somewhere. The tidy five-step ladder, and its attribution to this inscription, are not.

MCQ WATCH — the early-medieval layer

The two inscriptions: Rajor (Alwar), of Mathanadeva of the Gurjara-Pratihara lineage, V.S. 1016, worked out to 14 January A.D. 960 · Partabgarh (Pratapgarh), of Mahendrapala II of Mahodaya, Samvat 1003.

The terms: udranga = fixed or principal land tax, tax on permanent tenants, paired with uparikara for temporary tenants · bhaga = the king's share of produce, originally one-sixth · bhoga = periodical supplies of firewood, fruit and flowers, and also a territorial unit · hiranya = tax in cash · mandapika = the customs house.

The units: pathaka = a group of villages, the pargana's ancestor · mandalika = ruler of a mandala · tantrapala = officer in charge of administration · agrahara = rent-free Brahmin holding · pancakula = board of five, customs house and heirless estates.

Trap: bhaga and bhoga are not the same word. One is a crop share, the other a delivery of firewood and flowers. Bhoga also means a district.

Trap: the meanings of khala-bhiksha, prasthaka, skandhaka and marganaka are not known. The editor of the Rajor inscription said so in print.

2. The Mughal frame: Ajmer Subah

Rajasthan did not sit outside the empire, and the unit it sat inside has a name that is directly examinable.

In 1580 Akbar divided the empire into twelve subahs, and one of those original twelve was the Ajmer Subah, whose borders corresponded roughly to modern Rajasthan and whose capital was Ajmer. It was divided into seven sarkars, and all seven can now be named from Abu'l Fazl's own text: Ajmer (the capital), Jodhpur, Chitor, Ranthambhor, Nagor, Sirohi and Bikaner.

Why the seventh is so often missing, which is a better thing to know than the name itself. Until 20 August 2026 this page named only six, because the secondary accounts consulted named only six. The Ain-i-Akbari explains the omission. Abu'l Fazl sets out the parganas of the subah sarkar by sarkar — Ajmer, Jodhpur, Chitor, Ranthambhor, Nagor — and then stops, with the flat statement that the remaining two are "not laid down", under the heading naming them as Sirohi and Bikaner.

So the primary source itself supplies a name and withholds a description. Every later account that lists parganas therefore has five or six sarkars to work from, and Bikaner is the one that drops out. A candidate who knows why it drops out will not be talked out of the correct option by a list that omits it.

The Ain's own numbers for the subah, worth carrying because they are the sort of figure an examiner takes verbatim:

Two descriptive points from the same passage. Abu'l Fazl says the subah is formed of Mewar, Marwar and Hadauti, and lists its principal forts as Ajmer, Jodhpur, Bikaner, Jaisalmer, Amarkot, Abugarh and Jalor. Note that the subah is defined by three Rajput regions and garrisoned at seven points — the Mughal frame is drawn over an existing political geography rather than replacing it, which is the argument this whole chapter is making.

And a figure that bears directly on the revenue rate. Of this subah specifically the Ain says that a seventh or an eighth of the produce is paid as revenue, and very little in money — the land being sandy, water deep and the crops dependent on rain. That is a far lighter share than the one-third to one-half usually quoted for the empire's rich provinces, and the reason given is agronomic rather than political. Where the land was poor, the assessment followed the land.

The administrative hierarchy ran Subah → Sarkar → Pargana, and beneath the pargana, villages, mandals and forts.

The Diwan is the office to understand, not just to name. He was the second figure in the province and existed partly as a check on the Subedar, reporting separately. He collected revenue, tried revenue cases and was charged with improving agriculture, and no payment could be made without his sanction. A province with two heads reporting independently to the emperor is a deliberate design against provincial autonomy, and saying so is worth more than listing the four posts.

Note the shape of the whole chapter in that table: Diwan for revenue, Bakshi for military. The Rajput states used the same two words for the same two functions, which is why the systems are so easily confused and why the pairing is worth fixing now.

3. The Mughal system: four methods of assessment

Under Akbar and his successors, four systems of revenue assessment were in use. A question naming any one of them is usually testing whether you can place it against the other three.

Zabti and dahsala, which are related but not identical

This distinction is exactly the kind RPSC likes, and most notes blur it.

• Zabt denotes the general principle of a fixed cash assessment on measured land.
• Dahsala is the refinement that added a ten-year rate cycle, with revenue fixed on the average yield of the past ten years. Dahsala literally carries that ten.

The Ain-i-Akbari treats the terms as cognate but distinct. The dahsala system was completed in 1580, and both are associated with Raja Todar Mal, whose name attaches to the bandobast. Todar Mal also introduced a uniform system of land measurement, which is what made cash assessment possible at all.

The conceptual point worth carrying into Mains: zabti moved the state's demand from a share of what was grown to a fixed sum in cash. That transfers the risk of a bad harvest from the state to the cultivator, and it forces the cultivator into the market to raise coin. Batai and kankut leave the risk with the state. That is a real difference in how a peasant experiences the same nominal rate.

MCQ WATCH — the Mughal methods

The four: zabti / dahsala, batai (ghalla-bakhshi, bhaoli), kankut, nasaq.

Zabt vs dahsala: zabt is the principle of fixed cash assessment; dahsala adds the ten-year average. Completed 1580. Both associated with Todar Mal, with uniform land measurement.

Trap: batai is crop-sharing, kankut is estimation, nasaq is rough assessment. Only zabti is a measured cash system.

How the land was actually measured

Cash assessment is impossible without a reliable unit, and this is the part candidates skip.

• The Ilahi Gaz was the measuring rod introduced under Akbar, of about 33 inches, roughly 82.5 cm.
• The jarib was the measuring chain: bamboo pieces joined by iron rings, usually 100 Ilahi Gaz long. It replaced rope and cord, which shrink and expand with the weather and so gave different answers in different seasons.
• The bigha was the standard unit of area.

That small engineering decision is worth a sentence in Mains. A rope measures differently in the monsoon than in the dry season, so a revenue system built on ropes cannot be uniform however honest its officials. Replacing rope with a rigid chain is what made a fixed cash demand defensible.

The four classes of land

Assessment also depended on how continuously a field was cultivated.

MCQ WATCH — measurement and classes

Ilahi Gaz ≈ 33 inches / 82.5 cm · jarib = bamboo chain with iron rings, usually 100 gaz, replacing weather-sensitive rope · unit of area, the bigha.

The four classes, in order of decreasing use: Polaj (annual) → Parauti (temporary fallow) → Chachar (three to four years fallow) → Banjar (uncultivated).

4. The Rajput states: central administration

Now the other system. The states of Rajasthan ran their own governments, and the offices have their own names.

The Kotwal's brief is unusually specific and is therefore very examinable. He maintained law and order, regulated prices, checked weights and measures, oversaw roads, organised night patrols, and settled minor disputes. Read that list: it is a municipal office as much as a policing one, and a question asking "who regulated prices and weights and measures" is asking about the Kotwal, not the Diwan.

Below the capital: pargana and village

The territorial unit was the pargana.

The Amil did not work alone. He implemented the revenue rates and collected in the pargana assisted by the Qanungo, Patel, Patwari and Chaudhary, which is the chain a question about "who assisted the Amil" is after.

Note the split between Amil and Amin, because it is a favourite. Amin assesses; Amil collects. Two offices, one letter apart, and a question that offers both is testing exactly that.

Qanungo and Patwari are the second pair to keep apart. The Patwari records the village; the Qanungo records the pargana. Both are record keepers, at different levels, and both survived into the British and modern revenue systems, which is why they are the two names an aspirant is most likely to half-recognise.

Below the pargana the state ran to villages, mandals and forts.

Who kept order below the pargana, and who did the work below the Patwari

The table above ends at the Patwari, which leaves two holes: nobody in it is armed, and nobody in it actually measures a crop. A doctoral study of the Marwar nobility, built on the Rajasthan State Archives bahis and the state's own administrative reports, fills both. Its window is 1800 to 1873, so this is the machinery of the late princely state rather than of the sixteenth century, and it is labelled as such here.

The Faujdar is the missing armed officer. Almost every large thikana had one. He was a military and police officer, commander of the jamiyat, the horsemen the jagirdar posted at the neighbouring parganas under the Hakims to keep order. On a theft he moved with the pagi, the tracker he appointed for the purpose. On a dacoity, on a report from the village Chaudhari, he led the bahal, the organised sortie of horsemen. So the Hakim heads the pargana and the Faujdar carries the weapons in it, which is the relation a question about pargana law and order is after. The same word does other work elsewhere: in Kota the faujdars were divisional magistrates hearing criminal appeals from tahsildars, and in other states the Faujdari (criminal) and Diwani (civil) courts were presided over by two officials called hakims.

The thikana had a whole establishment of its own, generally named Kamdar, Vakil, Musahib, Pradhan, Faujdar, Daroga of the Suttar-khana, Potedar, Kothari and clerks. A large estate was cut into halqas, each under a Kamdar, and the seniormost Kamdar was styled Sardar Kamdar or Musahib. The Kamdar's work in the estate answered to the Diwan's in the state. Note who these officials were. They came from the Oswal, Pushkarna and Pancholi communities, and a Thakur would rarely take a fellow Rajput as his adviser on revenue or politics. That single fact explains more about how a Rajput estate was actually run than a list of ten offices.

Below the Patwari the village staff were paid in grain at the harvest, which is why they belong to a revenue chapter rather than a civics one:

The Tolawati is the one that matters, and here is why. Section 6 of this page says that lata and kunta took a share of the actual crop. A share of an actual crop has to be weighed by somebody, and that somebody was a paid officer with a name, hired by the jagirdar and paid by the villagers whose heap he was weighing. Every complaint a cultivator ever made about a short measure ran through him.

What the Gazetteer records, as the states were actually run

The offices above are drawn from accounts of the medieval system. It is worth setting beside them what a colonial administrative source describes on the ground, because the vocabulary had broadened by then — while remembering what such a source is and is not good for. The Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Rajputana (1908) was compiled to make the region legible to the government that produced it. On offices, jurisdictions and administrative terminology it is describing machinery it dealt with daily, which is where it is strongest; on the people those offices governed it is not a neutral witness, and nothing of that kind is taken here. It records that a ruler

"is usually assisted by a Council or a body of ministerial officers called the Mahakma khas, or by a Diwan or Kamdar. The officials in the districts are variously termed hakims, tahsildars, nazims and ziladars, and, as a rule, they perform both revenue and judicial duties."

Three things there are worth carrying.

• The Mahakma Khas is the ruler's council or ministerial body, and the Kamdar an alternative to the Diwan. Neither appears in most preparation material.
• The district officer is called hakim, tahsildar, nazim or ziladar depending on the state — so hakim is one term among four, not a universal title.
• Revenue and judicial duties were combined in the same officer. That is a structural fact, not a detail: there was no separation of the two functions at district level, which is the condition the peasant movements of the next chapter ran up against when they sought redress.

The same source records that the states' districts and subdivisions were called hukumats, tahsils, nizamats, zilas or parganas, and that they numbered about 220 across the Agency.

One caution on using it this way. A 1908 survey describes the system as the colonial administration found and understood it, roughly a century after the treaties and long after the medieval arrangements this chapter is chiefly about. Continuity should not be assumed: where the Gazetteer's vocabulary and the medieval vocabulary differ, that may be genuine change over time, or it may be a colonial officer reaching for the nearest term he knew. This page therefore keeps the two descriptions side by side and separately labelled rather than merging them into one list.

MCQ WATCH — the offices

Central: Pradhan (chief minister) · Diwan (revenue) · Bakshi (military) · Khansama (materials, under the Diwan) · Khajanchi (treasury) · Kotwal (capital and towns).

Kotwal's specifics: law and order, prices, weights and measures, roads, night patrols, minor disputes.

Pargana: Hakim (head — justice, peace, revenue) · Amin (assesses) · Amil (collects) · Mushrif (accounts) · Bitikchi (records) · Patwari (village records).

The classic pair: Amin assesses, Amil collects.

5. Land tenure: the five categories

This is the heart of the topic and the highest-yield table on the page. Every village in a Rajput state fell into one of these.

Sasan and Doli are the pair that gets confused, since both are religious grants. Keep them apart by the emphasis the sources place: sasan is the grant made for religious purposes, doli is specifically tax-free land donated for them.

The Bhomiyas, who are the distinctive Rajasthani institution

Bhomiyas were Rajputs given hereditary land in return for service to the state. The terms on which their title was recognised required them to render military service when called upon and to pay a quit rent.

The equivalence worth knowing: Mewar's Bhumias correspond to Marwar's Bhomicharas, and the position was substantially the same in both.

Why this matters more than it looks. A jagir was a grant that the state could in principle resume, and whose transfer needed approval. Bhom was hereditary and tax-exempt, held on a service condition rather than at pleasure. A state with a large bhom class has permanently alienated part of its revenue base in exchange for a standing obligation of arms. That is a structural fact about Rajput states, and it is a better Mains point than any list of taxes.

The Grasia beside the Bhomiya, and the tenure the table leaves out

The Bhomiya has a counterpart, and the pair is the cleanest tenure distinction in the topic. Tod set it out from Mewar practice in a single passage:

"There are two classes of Rajpoot landholders in Mewar... One is the Grasya t'hacoor, or lord; the other the Bhoomia. The Grasya chieftain is he who holds (gras) by grant (putta) of the prince, for which he performs service with specified quotas at home and abroad, renewable at every lapse, when all the ceremonies of resumption, the fine of relief, and the investiture take place. The Bhoomia does not renew his grant, but holds on prescriptive possession. He succeeds without any fine, but pays a small annual quit-rent, and can be called upon for local service in the district which he inhabits."

Grasia comes from gras, a subsistence, literally a mouthful, and Tod notes that every patta opened with the formula "to so-and-so, gras has been ordained". The word states the theory of the tenure. The grant is a mouthful, a maintenance, not a property.

Set that against the district gazetteer material in section 5 and the two accounts lock together. The gazetteer has the Bhumia paying a nominal quit rent called bhumbrar and performing watch and ward, guarding roads and escorting treasure, which is precisely Tod's "local service in the district which he inhabits". Two sources a century apart, working from different records, describing the same obligation.

What the cultivator himself held

Every tenure named so far belongs to the state or to a noble. The peasant had a recognised interest of his own, and in Marwar it had a name. Cultivators in jagir and khalsa villages alike were divided into Bapidars and Gair Bapidars. Bapidars held occupancy rights, and bapidari, from bap, father, was inherited. A jagirdar granted it in three situations:

1. Where the cultivator dug a well or built an embankment at his own cost to irrigate his fields and his neighbours', he took the title to the land lying around it.
2. Where he repeopled a deserted site of the jagir and brought the land round it under the plough.
3. Where he undertook to pay a lump sum, an enhanced rent in perpetuity, for a particular piece of land.

Such land became the perpetual inheritance of the cultivator and could not be resumed except on very strong grounds. It could be sold, but could not be given away in charity, and it was not rent-free: bapi holders paid the customary rent at a concession of about twenty per cent, with further privileges such as the standing trees and the grass on their fields.

That is worth a paragraph in Mains on its own. A revenue system described only through khalsa, jagir, bhom, sasan and doli describes what the state and the nobility held. Bapidari describes what the man behind the plough held, and it was created by investment: a well, a resettled hamlet, a contract. The state answered improvement with a heritable right in the soil.

Pasaita, which is Bhom turned inside out

One more tenure completes the set. Pasaita was land given by the jagirdar, not by the Darbar, to servants of the estate, a Bhangi, a Dhobi, a Kamdar, in place of wages. No tax of any kind was levied on it, and it could be resumed the moment the holder's services ceased to be required.

Put Pasaita and Bhom side by side and the axis becomes visible.

Tax-freedom and security of tenure are two separate variables, and a question that offers both tenures is testing whether you have noticed that. A related rule runs the other way. Land granted in charity to Brahmins, Charans or a religious purpose was given only on a specific sanad from the Darbar, was exempt from all taxes, and was held highly sacrilegious to resume, and the pattas issued to jagirdars stated expressly that no land of the jagir might be given away in sasan or doli. A jagirdar could alienate his own revenue. He could not alienate the ruler's.

6. The rekh, and why there are two of them

Rekh is the standard against which the ruler's dues from a Samant or Jagirdar were determined. It is the pivot of the whole jagirdari system, and in Marwar it comes in two forms that are constantly merged.

So the patta records an assessment, and the bhartu records a payment. A question asking which figure appears in the grant document is asking for Patta Rekh; one asking what reached the treasury is asking for Bhartu Rekh.

A caution. Descriptions of the second term vary across sources: some define it as the amount deposited in the treasury on the basis of the Patta Rekh, others as the tax payable on actual produce, with the Patta Rekh described as an annual limit determined by the Diwan. The distinction between an assessed figure and a paid figure is secure; the precise basis of the calculation is not, and this page does not assert it.

What a state gazetteer records about tenure and assessment

The account above is drawn from the standard secondary literature. The Government of Rajasthan's own district gazetteer describes the same system from the state's records, and it is worth setting out separately because it settles two questions the secondary literature leaves open.

The four principal tenures, as the gazetteer gives them for Mewar:

One rule in that table is worth memorising on its own. On the death of a Rajput jagirdar the estate immediately became Khalsa — it reverted to the Darbar — and stayed so until the successor was recognised by the Maharana, when it was conferred afresh with a new patta. A jagir was therefore not inherited; it was re-granted, and the interval of reversion is the mechanism by which the ruler kept the nobility dependent. From non-Rajput jagirdars the tribute was not exacted, but they served when called and paid nazrana.

And one office the standard lists omit: the Pawadars, who held tracts of land inside Khalsa villages at favoured rates and rendered service in return.

Assessment, in the gazetteer's own terms. Land revenue was ordinarily taken in kind, and the share varied by district, village, caste and crop.

• Batai — an actual division of the produce after threshing.
• Kankut — division on a conjectured estimate of the crop standing on the ground.
• Lata and Kunta — a further method, the crop estimated by the officials while standing.
• Serana — an impost originally of one seer per maund, but as high as ten seers in some villages.
• Barar — a money cess, also often levied.

This settles the lata-kunta question directly. Some circulated material glosses the term as a punishment. The gazetteer places lata and kunta squarely among the methods of assessing a standing crop, alongside batai and kankut — which is what this chapter has said, and it now has a state-government source rather than an inference.

On the share, two figures that are not in conflict. The gazetteer says the share of the jagirdars and the state varied from one half to one sixth of the gross produce, and separately that the amount of land revenue ordinarily ranged from one quarter to one half, the latter being more common. The first is the full range; the second is where the range actually sat. Set both against the Ain's one seventh or one eighth for Ajmer Subah in section 1, and the picture is consistent: a wide legal range, a heavy customary norm, and a much lighter assessment where the land was poor.

Where the cesses end. The gazetteer describes lag-bag cesses imposed on peasants regularly or occasionally, and gives their categories rather than a name-list: cesses on agriculture, production, irrigation, cattle breeding, goods transportation, natural goods, and social occasions. They were abolished by statute — the Rajasthan Discontinuance of Cesses Act, 1959, under which the various cesses collected in addition to rent on agricultural holdings were discontinued, with certain exceptions.

The number of cesses is disputed and no source verifies a count. The Act is the firmer fact: it fixes precisely when and by what instrument they stopped. Learn the Act, not the number.

Two more dates from the same source, for the settlement sequence. A regular settlement was attempted in 1871-72 and abandoned after two years; Maharana Sajjan Singh ordered one in 1878 and the services of Mr Wingate were secured in 1879, with preliminary operations complete by 1884 and the settlement introduced for a twenty-year term. The second settlement was begun by Mr C. G. Trench in 1922. Batai continued in the jagir areas until 1949, while in the Khalsa areas it had been replaced by cash rents fixed on the quality of the land.

And one coinage fact, on a topic this chapter otherwise declines. The gazetteer records that the rates in force until 1904 were in the Salim Shahi currency, and that when this was converted into Imperial currency the rates were halved throughout the territory. That is a rare instance of a princely coinage appearing in a revenue record with a date and a conversion effect attached, and it is carried for that reason — the sources chapter still flags mint issues and denominations generally as inconsistent across accounts.

What else a feudatory owed, and the two things he could not do

Rekh was not the whole of it. The Marwar nobles' own petition to the Governor-General in 1857 names the three demands they said were beyond their capacity to pay: Rekh, Hukamnama and Neota. That is not a coaching list. It is what the aggrieved parties themselves wrote down.

The Hukamnama is the lever, and it is the same lever as the Khalsa reversion rule above. A jagir that reverts on a death and is re-conferred by fresh patta gives the ruler an occasion to re-price the estate, and the succession fee is the price. Because the amount was unfixed, the Maharaja demanded and the Thakurs resisted for decades. When a Thakur's rekh or hukamnama fell due and went unpaid, the Darbar drew the money from the state banks and debited it to the defaulter with interest, which the Political Agent believed was being compounded. The demand was regularised at last by the agreement of 1869, after British intervention following the crisis of November 1868. A named instrument with a date is worth more here than any list of levies.

Rekh also measured the sword, not only the purse. Under Article 48 of the Code of Rules agreed in the 1840s, the Thakurs of Marwar undertook to pay the British Government Rs 1,15,000 in lieu of 1,500 horsemen, out of the rekh due to their sovereign. A cash figure and a troop figure are commuted into each other, out of one assessment. That is the strongest available evidence that the rekh did the work of the Rajput analogue to a sawar rank: the assessment fixed what the estate owed, and what it owed could be counted in rupees or in riders. What is still not established is any published table of horsemen per rank, which this page continues not to assert.

Now the limits. A pattait, a noble of any category, was the principal executive and judicial authority inside his own jurisdiction and decided civil and criminal cases. He could not award capital punishment. The eight principal Thakurs of Marwar are described as exercising all the rights of sovereignty except that one, over their own sub-vassals as well as their ryots. The same reservation appears on the other side of Rajputana: in Kota the Mahakma Khas was presided over by the Maharao, who alone could pass a death sentence. Two states, two record sets, one reserved power.

The other item on the usual list of reserved powers is false, and it is worth learning as a trap. It is widely written that feudatories could not mint coins. In Marwar the principal Thakurs enjoyed the privilege of minting, renewed at succession, and if a deceased Thakur had not held it his successor could not claim it. The Thakur of Kuchaman, of the Mertia sept, obtained permission from Maharaja Man Singh to open a mint at Kuchaman in 1838, and the Thakur of Budsu held a similar privilege for a time. In Mewar, Tod records that the chief of Salumbra "coins by sufferance" from the mines on his own estate. Coinage was a granted and revocable privilege, not a blanket prohibition, which is a sharper constitutional point than the prohibition would have been: a privilege renewed at every succession is one more lever in the ruler's hand.

A named cess, for the record. Some of the large Marwar thikanas levied gasmari, a graduated tax on cattle, or as the word implies the right of pasture: a sheep or goat at one anna, a buffalo at eight annas, a camel at three rupees. It belongs with the lag-bag categories set out above, and it is one of the few such cesses for which an actual rate survives.

7. The taxes, and the four kinds of jagir

What was actually levied

The lag-bag are the part that decides how heavy the system actually was. Land revenue alone understates the burden, because a long list of additional cesses sat on top of it. Figures for how many circulate widely and are not verified here, but the structural point is secure and is the bridge to the peasant-movement chapter: when nineteenth and twentieth-century cultivators in Rajasthan agitated, the cesses were as often the grievance as the revenue rate itself.

Lata and Kunta

These are the two Rajasthan-specific assessment methods, and they are forms of batai, that is, of crop-sharing rather than of cash assessment.

The share taken by the state or the jagirdar varied from one half to one sixth of the gross produce. The Bijolia thikana, which becomes important in the peasant-movement chapter, assessed mainly by Lata and Kunta.

Set that against the Mughal system deliberately. Zabti fixes a cash demand on measured land. Lata and Kunta take a share of the actual crop, judged by eye or after threshing. The Rajput states were therefore running, in substance, the batai family of methods while the empire beside them ran cash assessment. That is the sharpest single contrast in this chapter.

The four kinds of jagir

The previous chapter introduced the watan jagir. It is one of four.

Al-tamgha is the fifth term worth recognising: under Jahangir, jagirs resembling the watan were granted to some Muslim nobles in their family towns or birthplaces.

The contrast that matters is tankha against watan. A tankha jagir was rotated every few years precisely so that its holder could not sink roots in it. A watan jagir was the opposite: hereditary, non-transferable, and in the holder's own country. The Rajput settlement was built on the one kind of assignment the empire otherwise tried hard to avoid, and that is why it held, and why Aurangzeb's conversion of Marwar's watan in 1679 was the specific breach that provoked thirty years of war.

MCQ WATCH — taxes and jagirs

Levies: Bhog = the land tax, and a tax on the crop rather than on the land · Sayar = customs, import and export duty, chungi (Jaipur) · Lag-Bag = the cesses on top.

Assessment: Lata = share fixed after cutting and cleaning; Kunta = share estimated on the standing crop. Both are batai. Share ranged from one half to one sixth. Bijolia used mainly Lata and Kunta.

Jagirs: Watan (homeland, hereditary, non-transferable) · Tankha (in lieu of salary, transferable every 3-4 years) · Mashrut (conditional) · In'am (no service obligation, independent of rank) · Al-tamgha (Jahangir, to Muslim nobles in their home towns).

8. Mewar's nobility: the Amarshahi Rekh

Rajasthan's states graded their nobles formally, and Mewar's scheme is the one with a name and a date.

The Amarshahi Rekh was founded by Maharana Amar Singh II (1697 to 1709), and it graded the nobility into ranks:

The third order are the Gol ke Sardar, whose jagirs ran to a few villages and sometimes a single one. The Review of Mewar's arrangements makes a shrewd political observation about them: these nobles attended on the person of the Maharana and formed his strength against any combination of the higher nobles. A ruler surrounded by many small dependent nobles is insured against the few large ones, which is a design, not an accident.

Salumber is the estate to remember by name. Its holder, a first-class noble, performed the coronation of the ruler of Mewar, served as commander-in-chief, signed royal decrees alongside the Rana, and administered the capital in the Rana's absence. Bhindar is another of the Solah Umrao, the sixteen first-class nobles.

A caution on the count. The third-class figure appears as both 330 and 332. Carry "about 330" unless a paper forces a choice.

MCQ WATCH — the Amarshahi Rekh

Founder and date: Maharana Amar Singh II, r. 1697-1709.

The grades: 16 Umraos first class · 32 second class · about 330 third class, the Gol ke Sardar.

Salumber: performs the coronation, serves as commander-in-chief, co-signs decrees, administers the capital in the Rana's absence. Bhindar is also a Solah Umrao.

7A. Marwar's four orders, and what a rank actually looked like

Mewar's is not the only scheme with a name and a structure. Marwar graded its nobility just as formally, and its grades were defined not by acreage but by what the Maharaja did with his body when a noble entered the Durbar. That is the detail which makes the whole apparatus intelligible, and it is missing from almost every list.

Start with the gesture. When the ruler rose in a formal Durbar to receive a noble, the honour was tazim.

• If he rose once, on the noble's arrival, it was Ekevri (single) Tazim.
• If he rose on arrival and again on departure, it was Dohri (double) Tazim.

Then the ceremony extended. The Sardar laid his sword in front of him, bowed, and touched the hem of the royal garment. The Maharaja acknowledged the salutation by placing his hand on the Sardar's shoulder, which was Bah Pasav, and if he then drew that hand back to his own chest the honour was Hath-ka-Kurb. The three honours are not three separate customs. They are three stopping points in one continuous gesture, and a noble's rank was the point at which the ruler stopped.

The Maharaja accepted nazar and nichhrawal standing from a tazim sardar and sitting from everybody else, so a man's rank was visible in the room every time a present changed hands.

And the honours could not be bought. The Thakur of Chandawal offered Maharaja Bijay Singh forty to fifty thousand rupees for the bestowal of one, and was refused, and told that such an honour was reserved for noble sacrifices and was not to be granted in lieu of a money payment.

The Sirayats, and the seating that encoded a succession

A Sirayat is a Thakur or Sardar entitled to the sira, the first seat, in the Durbar. There were eight at the beginning of the nineteenth century and twelve by the end of Maharaja Takhat Singh's reign, all Rathors, ranked by the importance of estate and sept:

Where a man sat was a statement about descent. From Rao Jodha's time the nobles descended from his brothers sat on the right of the chief, and the left was reserved for his own line. Locally the two sides were the Jeewani and the Davi Misal. On the ground that meant Champawats and Kumpawats on the right, and Jodhas, Mertias and Udawats, descended from Jodha's younger sons, on the left. Among the three right-hand Thakurs of Pokaran, Auwa and Asop, precedence went by who arrived first, and the same rule ran down the five of the left. The remaining four took a first seat only when nobody senior in their group attended. In 1933 the principal Thakurs agreed among themselves not to take it ill if the rule of precedence was not strictly observed, and the Maharaja confirmed the agreement.

The Ganayats are the other category to fix. They were Rajput clans allied to the ruling house by marriage, Bhatis, Ranawats, Kachhwahas, Haras, Chauhans and Deoras, and they came in two kinds: those who held a jagir purely by the marriage connection, and those who either held land before the Rathors came to Marwar or were granted a jagir for service and sacrifice. A Ganayat is defined by his relation to the ruling family, not by descent from it, which is what separates him from a Rathor of the blood.

The Pradhanship, which three accounts place in three different houses

This is a genuine dispute and the useful thing is to say so. The hereditary office of first noble, the Pradhan of Marwar, was given to Champa, and his descendants, the Champawats, held it. Where it sat afterwards depends on who is asked, and when.

The circulated version is the one neither source supports. What both real accounts agree on is that the office was hereditary in the Champawat sept and moved between its principal houses, Pokaran, Auwa, Asop and Nimaj, as those houses rose and fell with the ruler. Learn the sept, not the estate. Tod's verdict on the institution is worth carrying into Mains: these Pradhans of Marwar, he wrote, "have always been mill-stones round the necks of their princes", an evil built into the system when Jodha's sons divided the estates, because uniting so powerful a branch to the crown "gave too much equality".

Why the small nobles kept getting smaller

Section 7 notes that the third-order Gol nobles held a few villages and sometimes one. The mechanism has a name. Tod calls the minute sub-division of fiefs bhyad, brotherhood, and likens it to the French tenure by frerage: "'Give me my bhut (share),' says the Rajpoot, when he attains to man's estate, 'the bhut of the bhyad', and thus they go on clipping and paring till all are impoverished."

Tod's qualification is as useful as his term. He says the practice did not prevail so much in the larger principalities as in the isolated tributary thakurats, and that where it had proper limits it was useful. So bhyad names a real mechanism of fragmentation, not a universal law of Rajput tenure.

In Marwar it operated through named shares. Younger brothers, the Chhutbhais, took maintenance out of the estate: one-tenth at Bhadrajan, one-sixteenth at Khejarla, and at Gurha a jagir worth two thousand rupees of revenue a year. In some thikanas the Chhutbhais paid a fixed rekh and chakri to the jagirdar; in others they were exempt from every cess. When such a line died out the land escheated to the thikana and was called galat panti. Alongside them the Zillayats were petty jagirdars holding their patta directly from the Maharaja, to whom they paid their own rekh and hukamnama, but who were placed under a neighbouring Thakur for convenience and gave him their allegiance. In 1857 the Zillayats followed their Thakurs against their own sovereign, and lost their villages for it. Their saying was Raj ka Malik Wo, Pat ka Malik Yeh: he is the master of the state, but this is the master of my seat.

The Mewar first class, counted

The chapter names the 16 Umraos and singles out Salumber and Bhindar. The Imperial Gazetteer's entries on the individual estates let the class be seen rather than asserted. Each entry gives the title, the family, the number of villages, the annual income and the tribute.

Figures as printed in the Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Rajputana (1908), with town populations there taken from the 1901 Census.

Three things fall out of that table that no list of names gives you.

• The first class was not one clan. Chondawats dominate it, but Shaktawat, Jhala, Chauhan, Ponwar, Sarangdevot and Mertia Rathor houses all sit inside it. Mewar's premier nobility included men who were not Sisodias, and in two cases not of Mewar stock at all.
• The titles are not uniform. Rawat, Rawat Sawai, Rao Sawai, Maharaj, Raj Rana, Raj, Thakur. A statement that all first-class nobles of Mewar were styled Rawat is false.
• Salumbar and Kurabar paid no tribute at all, and the rest paid at no consistent rate: Asind's Rs 1,040 on an income of Rs 80,000 against Begun's Rs 5,200 on Rs 48,000. Tribute recorded a history of individual settlements, not a percentage.

On Salumber, one correction and one confirmation. The Gazetteer states that the Rawat of Salumbar, head of the Chondawat family, ranks fourth among the nobles of Mewar. He is a first-class noble and he is not the senior one, and this page should not be read as saying otherwise. What Tod independently confirms is the function: when the Rana leaves the capital the Salumbra chief is invested with the government of the city and charge of the palace; by his hands the sovereign is girt with the sword, and from him he receives the mark of inauguration on his accession; he leads the van in battle by right, and in a siege his post is the Suraj Pol.

The inauguration itself, where the source contradicts itself

The Mewar accession involved a second party altogether, and the claim that circulates about it is half right.

Tod records two things that do not fit together. In the origin story of Bappa Rawal, the two Bhil companions of his flight were Baleo, of Oondree in the valley of the present capital, and Dewa, of Solanki descent, from Oguna Panora in the western wilds, and it was Baleo who drew the teeka of sovereignty with his own blood on the forehead of the prince. But where Tod describes the ceremony as still practised, he writes that "the descendants of Baleo of Oguna and the Oondree Bhil" claim the privilege, and that the Oguna chief makes the teeka of blood from an incision in the thumb and takes the prince by the arm and seats him on the throne, while the Oondree Bhil holds the salver of spices and sacred grains of rice.

So the same passage attaches Baleo to Oondree and then to Oguna, and gives the thumb-blood mark to the Oguna chief, while the flat claim in circulation gives it to the Bhil of Undri. This page therefore states what is secure and no more.

• A Bhil house applied a tilak of blood drawn from an incision in the thumb at the inauguration of the Rana of Mewar. That much is uncontested.
• Which house did it, and which held the salver, is not settled, and the fullest early account contradicts itself inside two paragraphs.
• The rite is not in competition with Salumber's. The Chondawat chief girds the sword and gives the mark of inauguration as the state's premier noble. The Bhil rite is a separate act asserting the claim of the country's older inhabitants. Two acts in one ceremony, not two rival claims.

Tod adds that the full ceremonial had largely lapsed by his day because of its cost. Jagat Singh was the last Rana crowned with the ancient magnificence, at ninety lakhs of rupees, close to a full year's revenue of the state.

MCQ WATCH — Marwar's orders and the tazim honours

The gesture: Tazim = the ruler rises to receive · Ekevri = rises once, on arrival · Dohri = rises on arrival and departure.

The escalation: Bah Pasav = hand placed on the Sardar's shoulder · Hath-ka-Kurb = that hand then drawn back to the ruler's own chest. Hath-ka-Kurb is the higher of the two.

The four orders: 1st, Sirayats (Dohri Tazim + Hath-ka-Kurb) · 2nd, Hath-ka-Kurb · 3rd, Bah Pasav · 4th, Ekevri Tazim only.

Sirayat = entitled to the sira, the first seat. Eight early in the nineteenth century, twelve by the end of Takhat Singh's reign, headed by Pokaran, Auwa, Asop. Right = Champawat and Kumpawat, from Jodha's brothers; left = Jodha, Mertia, Udawat, from his younger sons. The two sides: Jeewani and Davi Misal.

Ganayats = Rajput clans allied by marriage: Bhati, Ranawat, Kachhwaha, Hara, Chauhan, Deora.

Fragmentation: bhyad, Tod's term for the minute sub-division of fiefs · Chhutbhais, younger brothers on maintenance shares · Zillayats, petty jagirdars holding directly from the Maharaja but attached to a neighbouring Thakur.

Trap: the Pradhanship of Marwar was hereditary in the Champawat sept and moved between Pokaran, Auwa, Asop and Nimaj. Any single-estate answer is a guess.

9. The record that lets any of this be checked

The reason this topic can be taught with confidence is a single work.

Muhnot Nainsi (1610 to 1670) was an Oswal by community and rose to be Diwan of Maharaja Jaswant Singh of Marwar. Before that he served as hakim of several parganas, and that first-hand administrative experience is what stands behind his writing.

His Marwar ra Pargana ri Vigat was compiled between 1658 and 1664. It is a survey of the kingdom of Marwar, combining historical anecdote with statistical detail on villages, population, crops and revenue — in effect a gazetteer of the parganas under Jaswant Singh. His survey included a khanasumari, an enumeration of households by caste in every district capital.

Set that against the sources chapter's warning. Khyats are unreliable for dynastic origins because compilers blended legend into genealogy. The Vigat is a different kind of document entirely: an administrator's survey, compiled for use, by a man who had governed the parganas he was describing. It is the strongest single source in the medieval Rajasthan syllabus, and it belongs to this chapter rather than to the dynastic ones.

His other work, the Nainsi ri Khyat, is the chronicle. One author, two genres, two levels of reliability, and knowing which is which is exactly the source-criticism skill the sources chapter asks for.

10. Statement-based questions: the fault lines

Type A — Ajmer Subah, wrong sarkar or number

Type B — A Mughal term used for a Rajput institution, or the reverse

Type C — Two figures, one term

Type D — Tenure confused with tenure

• Khalsa is state land, not a grant.
• Jagir is a service grant needing approval to transfer; Bhom is hereditary and tax-exempt.
• Sasan and Doli are both religious; doli is specifically the tax-free donated land.
• A statement that all Rajput land was jagir is false: khalsa, bhom, sasan and doli are all separate categories.
• Jagir is not one thing either. Watan is hereditary and non-transferable; tankha is in place of salary and rotated every three or four years; mashrut is conditional; in'am carries no service obligation. A question naming one type is testing the set.

Type E — Officer at the wrong level

Type F — Author, wrong work

• Marwar ra Pargana ri Vigat is the survey; the Nainsi ri Khyat is the chronicle. Same author.
• The Vigat was compiled 1658 to 1664, under Jaswant Singh, whom Nainsi served as Diwan.

11. Writing this in Mains

Lead with the fact that two systems ran side by side. The Mughal empire assessed by zabti, batai, kankut and nasaq; the Rajput states ran khalsa, jagir, bhom, sasan and doli through pargana officers and measured their dues in rekh. An answer that treats Rajasthan as simply administered by Mughal methods has missed the structure of the period.

Use the tenure table to make a structural argument, not a descriptive one. A state whose land is substantially bhom has traded away revenue permanently in exchange for a hereditary obligation of arms. A state that keeps a large khalsa has cash. Where a given house sat on that spectrum shaped what it could do, and it is a far better explanation of relative strength than any list of battles.

Note what zabti does to risk. Fixing the demand in cash moves the risk of a bad harvest from the state to the cultivator and forces him into the market for coin. Batai leaves the risk with the state. The same nominal rate is a different burden under the two systems.

Read the Amarshahi Rekh as political design. Sixteen great nobles, thirty-two of the second rank, and some three hundred small ones attending on the Maharana in person. The smallest nobles are the ruler's counterweight to the largest, which is why their number is so much greater.

Finish with the sources point. This topic is more securely known than the battles, because pattas, bahis and Nainsi's Vigat were written for administrative use rather than for reputation. Saying so shows you understand why some parts of the syllabus can be stated flatly and others cannot.

12. Nowadays

Covering 1 January to 27 August 2026. This section is updated every month until Prelims and Mains. Everything in it is dated, because a current-affairs fact without a date is worse than no fact at all.

This chapter describes institutions that were abolished, and the honest report for this window is that nothing revived them. A sweep of Rajasthan government sources for 1 January to 27 August 2026 found no development bearing on the Mughal assessment system, the pargana establishment, the five land tenures, the rekh, or the jagirdari and bhomichara tenures.

One live thread, and it is archival rather than administrative. The Rajasthan State Archives at Bikaner showed records of the Rajputana princely states at Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur, from 17 to 19 March 2026, including a 1727 parwana of Sawai Jai Singh II regulating trade in the new city. A parwana is one of the record types this chapter's evidence rests on, and the exhibition is a reminder that the bahis and parwanas behind these institutions are a state holding that is still being catalogued and digitised.

What has not changed. The tenures described above ended in law, not in this window and not recently. Jagirdari abolition in Rajasthan runs from the Rajasthan Land Reforms and Resumption of Jagirs Act, 1952, which received the President's assent on 13 February 1952, and the lag-bag cesses ended with the Rajasthan Discontinuance of Cesses Act, 1959. Those two statutes remain the terminal dates for this chapter, and nothing in 2026 disturbed them.

Important for RAS

Prelims Focus

• Ajmer Subah, all seven sarkars — Ajmer (capital), Jodhpur, Chitor, Ranthambhor, Nagor, Sirohi, Bikaner. The Ain-i-Akbari gives pargana lists for only the first five and says the other two are not laid down, which is why Bikaner is the one missing from most secondary lists

• Ajmer Subah by the numbers (Ain-i-Akbari) — 7 sarkars, 197 parganas, measured land 2 crore 14 lakh 35,941 bighas 7 biswas, revenue 28 crore 84 lakh 1,557 dams of which 23 lakh 26,836 dams suyurghal, local force 86,500 cavalry and 3,47,000 infantry. The subah is formed of Mewar, Marwar and Hadauti; principal forts Ajmer, Jodhpur, Bikaner, Jaisalmer, Amarkot, Abugarh, Jalor; revenue share a seventh or an eighth of produce, and very little of it in money

• Ajmer Subah — one of the twelve subahs created in 1580, corresponding roughly to modern Rajasthan, capital Ajmer, divided into seven sarkars (named here: Ajmer, Jodhpur, Chittor, Ranthambore, Nagaur, Sirohi). Hierarchy Subah → Sarkar → Pargana, then villages, mandals and forts. Provincial officers: Subedar (Sipahsalar), Diwan (revenue, and a check on the Subedar — no payment without his sanction), Bakshi (military), Sadr (judicial)

• Land measurement — the Ilahi Gaz, about 33 inches / 82.5 cm; the jarib, a bamboo chain with iron rings, usually 100 gaz, replacing rope that shrinks and expands; area in bigha. Four classes: Polaj (annual), Parauti (temporary fallow), Chachar (three to four years fallow), Banjar (uncultivated)

• Kinds of jagir — Watan (homeland, hereditary, non-transferable) · Tankha (in lieu of salary, transferable every three or four years) · Mashrut (conditional on specified service) · In'am (no service obligation, independent of rank) · Al-tamgha (under Jahangir, to Muslim nobles in their home towns)

• Taxes — Bhog, the land tax, and a tax on the crop rather than on the land · Sayar, the Jaipur name for customs, import and export duty and chungi · Lag-Bag, the cesses levied on top of the revenue, some regular and some occasional

• Lata and Kunta — both forms of batai. Lata = share fixed after cutting and cleaning; Kunta = share estimated on the standing crop. The share ran from one half to one sixth of gross produce. Bijolia assessed mainly by these

• Mughal assessment — four systems: zabti / dahsala, batai (ghalla-bakhshi, bhaoli), kankut, nasaq. Zabt = the principle of fixed cash assessment on measured land; dahsala adds the ten-year average, completed 1580; both associated with Raja Todar Mal, who introduced uniform land measurement; the bandobast

• Rajput central offices — Pradhan (chief minister) · Diwan (revenue) · Bakshi (military: pay, supplies, recruitment, training) · Khansama (materials, under the Diwan) · Khajanchi (treasury) · Kotwal (capital and large towns: law and order, prices, weights and measures, roads, night patrols, minor disputes)

• Pargana officers — Hakim (head: justice, peace, revenue) · Amin (assesses) · Amil (collects, assisted by Qanungo, Patel, Patwari and Chaudhary) · Mushrif (accountant) · Bitikchi (record keeper) · Qanungo (pargana revenue papers, assessment schedules, record of collections) · Chaudhary (local knowledge, hereditary, sometimes combined with the Qanungo) · Patel (village headman) · Patwari (village land records, holdings, crops, fallow)

• Land tenure — Khalsa (direct state control) · Jagir (nobles, for service; transfer needs state approval) · Bhom (tax-exempt, Bhomiyas, service in emergencies) · Sasan (religious) · Doli (tax-free, donated for religious purposes)

• Bhomiyas — Rajputs with hereditary land for state service; military service on call plus a quit rent; Mewar's Bhumias = Marwar's Bhomicharas

• Rekh — the standard for the ruler's dues from Samants and Jagirdars. Patta Rekh = the jagir's estimated annual income, entered in the patta; Bhartu Rekh = the amount deposited in the royal treasury

• Amarshahi Rekh — Mewar's grading of nobles, founded by Maharana Amar Singh II (1697-1709): 16 Umraos (first class), 32 (second), about 330 (third, the Gol ke Sardar, holding a few villages each and attending on the Maharana in person). Salumber performs the coronation, is commander-in-chief, co-signs decrees and administers the capital in the Rana's absence; Bhindar is also one of the Solah Umrao

• Muhnot Nainsi (1610-1670) — Oswal; hakim of several parganas, then Diwan of Jaswant Singh; Marwar ra Pargana ri Vigat compiled 1658-1664, a survey of villages, population, crops and revenue including a khanasumari, an enumeration of households by caste; also the Nainsi ri Khyat, which is the chronicle

• The early-medieval vocabulary — udranga (the fixed or principal land tax, the tax on permanent tenants, paired with uparikara for temporary ones) · bhaga (the king's share of produce, originally one-sixth) · bhoga (periodical supplies of fruit, firewood and flowers, and also a territorial unit) · hiranya (tax in cash) · mandapika (the customs house) · pathaka (a group of villages, the pargana's ancestor) · pancakula (a board of five, customs house and heirless estates) · tantrapala, mandalika, agrahara, karanika

• The two Rajasthan inscriptions — Rajor (Alwar), of Mathanadeva of the Gurjara-Pratihara lineage, V.S. 1016, worked out to 14 January A.D. 960, carrying udranga, bhaga, khala-bhiksha, skandhaka and a schedule of market tolls · Partabgarh, of Mahendrapala II of Mahodaya, Samvat 1003, naming the western Pathaka of Dasapura and a Tantrapala

• Grasia and Bhomiya — the Grasia holds by patta, renewed at every lapse with a fine of relief, serving with specified quotas at home and abroad; the Bhomiya holds by prescriptive possession, succeeds without a fine, pays a small quit-rent, and serves locally only. Gras means a mouthful

• Bapidar and Gair Bapidar — the cultivator's own tenure. Bapidari, from bap, is an occupancy right, granted for digging a well, repeopling a deserted site, or contracting a fixed enhanced rent. Saleable, not giftable, not rent-free, at about twenty per cent below the customary rate

• Pasaita — land given by the jagirdar to estate servants in place of wages. No tax, but resumed when the service ends. The mirror image of Bhom

• The tazim honours — Tazim = the ruler rises; Ekevri once, Dohri on arrival and departure. Bah Pasav = hand on the shoulder; Hath-ka-Kurb = that hand drawn back to the ruler's chest, and the higher honour. Marwar's four orders: Sirayats (Dohri Tazim + Hath-ka-Kurb) · Hath-ka-Kurb · Bah Pasav · Ekevri Tazim

• Sirayats — Thakurs entitled to the sira, the first seat. Eight early in the nineteenth century, twelve by the end of Takhat Singh's reign, headed by Pokaran, Auwa, Asop. Right side = Champawat and Kumpawat, from Jodha's brothers; left = Jodha, Mertia, Udawat, from his younger sons. The two sides: Jeewani and Davi Misal

• Ganayats — Rajput clans allied by marriage to the ruling house: Bhati, Ranawat, Kachhwaha, Hara, Chauhan, Deora

• Dues besides rekh — Hukamnama, the succession fee, also charged as nazrana · Neota, levied on marriages in the royal family. Named together with rekh in the Marwar nobles' petition of 1857, and regularised by the agreement of 1869

• The reserved power — a pattait judged civil and criminal cases in his own jurisdiction but could not award capital punishment; in Kota the Maharao alone could pass a death sentence. Minting was not reserved: Marwar Thakurs held it as a privilege renewed at succession, and Kuchaman got a mint in 1838

• Bhyad — Tod's term for the minute sub-division of fiefs, brotherhood, likened to the French frerage. Chhutbhais took maintenance shares, one-tenth at Bhadrajan, one-sixteenth at Khejarla, and such land escheated as galat panti. Zillayats held directly from the Maharaja but were attached to a neighbouring Thakur

• Village staff below the Patwari — Kanwaria (guards the standing crop) · Tafadar (accounts of the Thakur's share at batai) · Tolawati (measures and weighs the produce) · Chaukidar (Minas and Bawaris) · Bhambi (messenger) · Hawaldar (revenue and peace in some jagir villages). The Faujdar commanded the thikana's horsemen, posted at the parganas under the Hakims

• Mewar's first class, by the Gazetteer's own numbers (1908) — Salumbar 237 villages and no tribute, its holder fourth in precedence · Deogarh 181 · Begun 127 · Badnor 117 · Kanor 110 · Bhindar 101 · Delwara 86 · Bijolia 83. Titles vary: Rawat, Rawat Sawai, Rao Sawai, Maharaj, Raj Rana, Raj, Thakur

• Gasmari — a Marwar thikana cess, a graduated tax on cattle or right of pasture: one anna a sheep or goat, eight annas a buffalo, three rupees a camel

Interview and Mains Angles

• Nainsi counted households by caste in every district capital in the 1660s, for administrative use. What does it mean that the state's most reliable surviving record of its own society is a revenue document rather than a chronicle?
• Bhom land was hereditary and tax-free, held against an obligation to fight. Did the Rajput states buy military security at the price of a permanently narrowed revenue base?
• Mewar's Amarshahi Rekh gave the Maharana some three hundred small nobles attending on his person and only sixteen great ones. Is that a hierarchy or an insurance policy?
• Zabti fixed the demand in cash and moved the risk of a failed harvest onto the cultivator. Is a "more scientific" revenue system necessarily a more humane one?
• A tenth-century grant in Alwar hands over a village together with its fines, its buried treasure, and the property of those who die without heirs. What kind of thing was a village, if all of that came with it?
• Marwar graded its nobility by whether the ruler rose once or twice and how far he drew back his hand. Is a hierarchy that lives in gestures weaker than one written in acres, or harder to dislodge?
• Bapidari gave a cultivator a heritable right in the soil for digging a well. Did the Rajput states reward improvement more intelligently than the revenue systems that replaced them?
• The Thakur of Chandawal offered fifty thousand rupees for a court honour and was told it was reserved for sacrifice. What is a state doing when it refuses to price something?

Practice

• Practice: Administration and Revenue — 109 questions built from this chapter: 91 MCQs, 10 assertion-reason and 8 match-the-following, plus 16 flashcards and 16 rapid one-liners. Built around the seven confusable pairs that decide this topic.

More in This Series

• Major Dynasties of Rajasthan — the first of the three topics in this syllabus line
• Resistance to and Collaboration with Central Power — the second, where the watan jagir is introduced
• Sources of the History of Rajasthan — the bahis and khyats, and why the Vigat is a stronger source than either
• Caution for Readers — the claims that are genuinely unsettled

Aggregator Watch

Unresolved claims from this box are collected, with what was checked, on the Caution for Readers page.

Sources & Verification

Checked as of 19 August 2026.

Facts verified for this chapter include: the four Mughal systems of revenue assessment in use under Akbar and his successors, namely zabti or dahsala, batai (also called ghalla-bakhshi or bhaoli), kankut and nasaq; the distinction between zabt as the general principle of fixed cash assessment and dahsala as the refinement introducing a ten-year rate cycle based on the average yield of the preceding ten years; the completion of the dahsala system in 1580; its association with Raja Todar Mal and the term bandobast; Todar Mal's introduction of a uniform system of land measurement; the central offices of the Rajput states, namely Pradhan, Diwan, Bakshi, Khansama, Khajanchi and Kotwal, with the Bakshi as head of the military department responsible for pay, supplies, recruitment and training, the Khansama as an officer under the Diwan responsible for procuring and managing state materials, and the Kotwal's duties of maintaining law and order, regulating prices, checking weights and measures, overseeing roads, organising night patrols and settling minor disputes; the pargana-level offices of Hakim, Amil, Amin, Mushrif and Bitikchi and the village-level Patwari, with the Amin assessing and the Amil collecting, and the Patwari maintaining records of village land, individual holdings, crops and fallow; the five land-tenure categories of khalsa, jagir, bhom, sasan and doli and what each denoted, including the requirement of state approval for the transfer of a jagir; the Bhomiyas as Rajputs holding hereditary land against military service on call and payment of a quit rent, and the correspondence between Mewar's Bhumias and Marwar's Bhomicharas; rekh as the standard for determining the ruler's dues from Samants and Jagirdars, with Patta Rekh as the estimated annual income of a jagir entered in the patta; the Amarshahi Rekh as Mewar's grading of the nobility founded by Maharana Amar Singh II, reigning 1697 to 1709, with sixteen first-class Umraos, thirty-two of the second class and some three hundred of the third, the Gol ke Sardar, holding a few villages each and attending on the Maharana in person as a counterweight to the higher nobles; Salumber's role in performing the coronation, serving as commander-in-chief, co-signing royal decrees and administering the capital in the Rana's absence, and Bhindar's place among the Solah Umrao; and Muhnot Nainsi's dates, his Oswal community, his service as hakim of several parganas and later as Diwan to Maharaja Jaswant Singh, the compilation of Marwar ra Pargana ri Vigat between 1658 and 1664 as a survey of villages, population, crops and revenue, and its inclusion of a khanasumari enumerating households by caste in every district capital.

Added in the enrichment pass of 19 August 2026, and verified before writing: the creation of twelve subahs in 1580 and Ajmer Subah among the original twelve, its correspondence to modern Rajasthan, its capital, its division into seven sarkars and the six named here; the administrative hierarchy of subah, sarkar and pargana, and the division below the pargana into villages, mandals and forts; the provincial offices of Subedar (also styled Sipahsalar), Diwan, Bakshi and Sadr, with the Diwan as the second figure in the province acting as a check on the Subedar, responsible for collecting revenue, trying revenue cases and improving agriculture, and without whose sanction no payment could be made; the Ilahi Gaz of about 33 inches or 82.5 cm, the jarib as a bamboo chain joined by iron rings of usually 100 gaz introduced in place of rope and cord that shrink and expand with the weather, and the bigha as the standard unit of area; the four classes of land, Polaj, Parauti, Chachar and Banjar, and what each denoted; the Qanungo's custody of pargana revenue papers, assessment schedules and records of collections, the Chaudhary's hereditary office and local knowledge with duties sometimes combined with the Qanungo's, and the Amil's assistance by Qanungo, Patel, Patwari and Chaudhary; Bhog as the land tax of Rajasthan, the equivalent of the Mughal mal, and specifically a tax on the crop rather than on the land; Sayar as the Jaipur name for import and export duty, customs and chungi; Lag-Bag as the cesses levied on top of the land revenue, some regular and some occasional; Lata as the share determined after the crop was cut and cleaned and Kunta as the share estimated on the standing crop, both being forms of batai, with the state or jagirdar's share ranging from one half to one sixth of gross produce, and the Bijolia thikana assessing mainly by these two; and the four kinds of jagir, watan (in the holder's homeland, hereditary and non-transferable), tankha (assigned in place of salary and transferable every three or four years), mashrut (conditional on specified duties or services) and in'am (carrying no service obligation and independent of rank), together with al-tamgha as the watan-like grant made under Jahangir to some Muslim nobles in their family towns or birthplaces.

Added on 20 August 2026, from the primary source. The Ain-i-Akbari of Abu'l Fazl, Book III, the Account of the Twelve Subahs, was read directly in the Jarrett English translation for this pass. Verified from it: that the Subah of Ajmer comprised 7 sarkars and 197 parganas; that the sarkars are Ajmer, Jodhpur, Chitor, Ranthambhor, Nagor, Sirohi and Bikaner; that Abu'l Fazl gives pargana lists for only the first five, stating of the remaining two that they are not laid down under a heading naming them as Sirohi and Bikaner; the subah's measured land of 2 crore 14 lakh 35,941 bighas and 7 biswas; its revenue in money of 28 crore 84 lakh 1,557 dams, of which 23 lakh 26,836 dams were suyurghal; its local force of 86,500 cavalry and 3,47,000 infantry; the statement that the subah is formed of Mewar, Marwar and Hadauti; the list of its principal forts as Ajmer, Jodhpur, Bikaner, Jaisalmer, Amarkot, Abugarh and Jalor; and the statement that a seventh or an eighth of the produce was paid as revenue, and very little in money, the soil being sandy, water obtainable only at great depth and the crops dependent on rain.

On the figures, stated honestly. The revenue totals above are given as printed in the Jarrett translation, which also supplies a rupee equivalent. The dam and rupee figures as printed do not reconcile exactly at the standard rate of 40 dams to the rupee, a discrepancy of the order of ten thousand dams that is consistent with a typesetting or scanning slip rather than a substantive disagreement. The figures are therefore reproduced as printed and attributed, not silently corrected, and the round numbers — 7 sarkars, 197 parganas, 86,500 cavalry — are the ones worth memorising.

Added on 20 August 2026, from a Government of Rajasthan district gazetteer. The Revenue Administration chapter of a Rajasthan District Gazetteer (2023) was read directly. Verified from it: the four principal tenures as Jagir, Bhum, Sasan and Khalsa; Jagir as originally land held on condition of military service, later extended to civil or political service and to personal favour, with jagirdars divided into Rajputs and others such as Mahajans and Kayasthas; the rule that on a Rajput jagirdar's death the estate immediately became Khalsa and remained so until the successor was recognised by the Maharana, when it was re-conferred by a fresh patta; that from non-Rajput jagirdars tribute was not exacted but service and nazrana were due; Bhum as held by petty chieftains and Bhumias paying a nominal quit rent called bhumbrar and performing watch and ward, guarding roads and escorting treasure; Sasan or Muafi as granted to Brahmins, Gosains, Charans or Bhats with no tribute and no service; Khalsa as land under the direct management of the Darbar; and the Pawadars as holders of tracts within Khalsa villages at favoured rates in return for service. Verified for assessment: batai as an actual division of produce after threshing, kankut as division on a conjectured estimate of the standing crop, lata and kunta as a further method of estimating the standing crop, serana as an impost originally of one seer per maund and in some villages as high as ten, and barar as a money cess; that the share of the jagirdars and the state ranged from one half to one sixth of gross produce, and that land revenue ordinarily ranged from one quarter to one half, the latter more common; that lag-bag cesses were imposed regularly or occasionally on agriculture, production, irrigation, cattle breeding, goods transportation, natural goods and social occasions; that batai continued in jagir areas until 1949 while Khalsa areas moved to cash rents fixed on land quality; the settlement sequence of an abandoned attempt in 1871-72, Maharana Sajjan Singh's decision of 1878, Mr Wingate's engagement in 1879, preliminary operations complete by 1884 and a twenty-year term, and a second settlement begun by Mr C. G. Trench in 1922; that rates in force until 1904 were in the Salim Shahi currency and were halved on conversion to Imperial currency; and that the Rajasthan Discontinuance of Cesses Act, 1959 discontinued the cesses collected in addition to rent on agricultural holdings, with certain exceptions.

Why the cess Act matters more than the cess count. This chapter has never been able to verify how many lag-bag cesses there were — the figure of 86 circulates and is not asserted here. What can now be stated exactly is when and by what instrument they ended. A named statute with a year is a firmer and more examinable fact than a contested count, and the page says so directly: learn the Act, not the number.

An attempt that failed, recorded so it is not repeated. Both volumes of Muhnot Nainsi's Marwar ra Pargana ri Vigat were located and downloaded for this pass in order to close the flag on pargana revenue totals. The scanned text layer proved unusable: the Rajasthani original has been passed through an OCR engine that produced no readable Devanagari whatsoever, only Latin-alphabet noise. The figures are in the printed volumes and remain out of our reach in the digital copies. They are still not reproduced from secondary summaries, and the flag stays open with its reason now stated.

Flagged rather than asserted: (a) the basis on which Bhartu Rekh was calculated, where two incompatible definitions circulate and only the assessed-versus-paid distinction is treated as secure; (b) the exact number of Mewar's third-class Samants, given as 330 or 332; (c) detailed lists of lag-bag cesses and named minor taxes, which differ across sources; (d) revenue totals from Nainsi's Vigat, which exist in the work but were not read directly for this chapter and are not reproduced from secondary summaries; (e) any fixed horsemen quota attached to the Amarshahi ranks; (f) the number of lag-bag cesses, commonly given as 86, and any figure for the residual share left to the cultivator, where only the one-half-to-one-sixth range taken by the state or jagirdar is confirmed; and (g) the identity of the seventh sarkar of Ajmer Subah, where the count of seven is confirmed and six are named.

Added on 28 August 2026, from primary epigraphy and published scholarship.

Added on 27 August 2026, from primary epigraphy and published scholarship. Six works were read directly for this pass. Each is named below with what was taken from it.

1. The early-medieval revenue vocabulary, and the Rajor inscription. F. Kielhorn, "Rajor Inscription of Mathanadeva; [Vikrama-]Samvat 1016", Epigraphia Indica, Vol. III, ed. E. Hultzsch, 1894-95, No. 36, pp. 263-267 — Epigraphia Indica, Vol. III. Verified from it: the find-spot near the Nilakantha Mahadeva temple at Paranagar, by Rajor or Rajorgadh in the Alwar State; the donor Mathanadeva of the Gurjara-Pratihara lineage, son of Savata, residing at Rajyapura; the date Magha sudi 13, V.S. 1016, which Kielhorn equated to Saturday, 14 January A.D. 960; the grant of Vyaghrapataka village in the Vamsapotaka bhoga, with its udranga, its bhoga and mayuta income, the shares (bhaga) of all sorts of grain, khala-bhiksha, prasthaka, skandhaka, marganaka, the fines and ten offences, gifts, treasures and deposits, aputrikadhana and nashtibharata, together with the neighbouring fields cultivated by the Gurjaras; and the tolls of lines 22-23, namely three vimsopakas per sack of produce brought to market, two palikas per ghataka-kupaka of clarified butter and oil, two vimsopakas per shop per month, and fifty leaves from every chollika.

2. What the editor of that inscription declined to say. From the same paper: Kielhorn's statement that lines 11-13 "contain a number of revenue-terms, the exact import of which is not apparent", and his footnote that "the exact meaning of this and the following terms I do not know", with the single gloss that khala-bhiksha means "the alms of the threshing floor". The circulated glosses of Kandhaka as a shoulder-load tax and of Khal-Bhiksha as a tax on barbers, washermen and potters are therefore not supported by the record they are attributed to, and are listed in the Aggregator Watch rather than in the body.

3. The Partabgarh inscription. Rai Bahadur Pandit Gaurishankar Hirachand Ojha, "Partabgarh Inscription of the Time of [the Pratihara] King Mahendra-pala II of Mahodaya: Samvat 1003", Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XIV, 1917-18, ed. F. W. Thomas, No. 13, pp. 176-188 — Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XIV. Verified from it: the find-spot at Partabgarh and the transfer of the stone to the Rajputana Museum, Ajmer; the consolidation of several grants of different dates on one stone; the village of Kharpara-padraka situated "in the western Pathaka (district) of Dasapura"; and Madhava styled Tantrapala-Mahasamanta-Mahadandanayaka, rendered by the editor as great feudatory, great governor and Chargé d'Affaires. Also verified negatively: the paper contains no vishaya and no khetaka, so the ladder "Vishaya to Pathaka to Khetaka" cannot be sourced to this inscription.

4. The definitions of the epigraphic terms. D. C. Sircar, Indian Epigraphical Glossary, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1966 — Indian Epigraphical Glossary. Read s.v. udranga (p. 349): "the fixed tax", "the land tax", "the principal tax" or "the tax on the permanent tenants", generally mentioned along with uparikara, minor taxes or the tax on temporary tenants; bhaga (p. 47): the king's share of the produce, "originally one-sixth"; bhoga (p. 54): "periodical supplies of fruits, firewood, flowers and the like which the villagers had to supply to the king", and separately a territorial unit; hiranya (p. 129): tax payable to the king in cash; mandapika (p. 196): customs house, with the Mandapika as its officer and a collector of tolls; pathaka: "a group of villages; a territorial division like a Pargana of later days"; pancakula: a board of administrators and arbitrators, usually of five members, charged with control of the customs house and with the property of persons dying without heirs; and Tantrapala, Mandalika, agrahara, Karanika and Gramapati. On the compound bhaga-bhoga the glossary is explicit that bhaga means the king's share of the produce and bhoga the periodical supplies made by tenants, which is why this page keeps the two words apart.

5. The Marwar nobility, the tazim honours, the village staff, and the cultivator's tenure. R. P. Vyas, Role of Nobility in Marwar (1800-1873 A.D.), Jain Brothers, New Delhi, 1969, a thesis approved for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Jodhpur, with a foreword by Dasharatha Sharma, built on the Rajasthan State Archives Haqikat, Sanad and Arji bahis, the Marwar Precis, Walter's Gazetteer of Marwar and Erskine's Rajputana Gazetteers — Role of Nobility in Marwar. Verified from it: the definition of a Sirayat as a Thakur or Sardar entitled to the sira, the first seat in the Durbar (Appendix G, glossary of terms); the eight Sirayats named for the 1820s and the twelve estates with their septs, listed in order of precedence, for the end of Takhat Singh's reign (pp. 172-173); the definitions of Ekevri and Dohri Tazim, of Bah Pasav as the hand placed on the Sardar's shoulder and of Hath-ka-Kurb as that hand drawn back to the ruler's chest, and the four orders of the nobility graded by them (pp. 172-174); the refusal of Maharaja Bijay Singh to sell such an honour to the Thakur of Chandawal; the right and left seating from Rao Jodha's time, the Jeewani and Davi Misal, and the septs on each side; the Ganayats as Rajput clans allied by marriage, in two categories; the Faujdar as the thikana's military and police officer commanding the jamiyat posted at the parganas under the Hakims (pp. 200-202); the thikana establishment of Kamdar, Vakil, Musahib, Pradhan, Faujdar, Daroga-Suttar-khana, Potedar, Kothari and clerks, the division of large estates into halqas, and the recruitment of officials from the Oswal, Pushkarna and Pancholi communities; the village officers Kanwaria, Tafadar, Tolawati, Chaukidar, Bhambi, Hawaldar, and the Chaudhari's pag ceremony (pp. 203-204); Bapidar and Gair Bapidar, the three grounds on which bapidari was granted, its inalienability in charity, and the concession of about twenty per cent in rent (pp. 205-207); Pusaita as tax-free land given by the jagirdar in lieu of wages and resumable when the service ended, and the rule that a patta forbade the grant of jagir land in sasan or doli (pp. 207-208); Gasmari as a graduated cattle or pasture cess at one anna a sheep or goat, eight annas a buffalo and three rupees a camel (p. 209); the Chhutbhai maintenance shares of one-tenth at Bhadrajan and one-sixteenth at Khejarla, the Gurha allowance of Rs 2,000 of revenue a year, and galat panti for the escheat of such land (p. 212); the Zillayats and their conduct in 1857; Rekh, Hukamnama and Neota as the three demands named in the nobles' petition of 1857, Hukamnama as the succession fee and Neota as the cess on royal marriages, and their settlement by the agreement of 1869; Tagirat defined in the same glossary as "devolution of a jagir", literally "transferred from"; the reservation of capital punishment from a pattait of any category and from the eight principal Thakurs; the Thakurs' privilege of minting, renewed at succession, and the mint granted to Kuchaman in 1838; and Article 48 of the Code of Rules, under which Rs 1,15,000 was paid in lieu of 1,500 horsemen out of the rekh due to the sovereign.

6. Mewar's tenures, the Salumbra office, and the inauguration. James Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajpoot States of India, second edition, Vol. I, Higginbotham and Co., Madras, 1873 — Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, Vol. I. Verified from it: the Grasya t'hacoor and the Bhoomia as the two classes of Rajput landholder in Mewar, with the terms of each and the derivation of grasya from gras, a mouthful (pp. 145-146); the Salumbra chief's charge of the city and palace in the Rana's absence, his girding of the sovereign with the sword and his giving of the mark of inauguration, and his right to lead the van, together with the statement that in Marwar the corresponding dignity was hereditary in the house of Ahwa and passed to the house of Ausope, having earlier been held jointly by Nimaj and Pokaran (in the chapter on the Feudal System of Rajast'han); bhyad, "the minute subdivision of fiefs", the bhut of the bhyad, and Tod's observation that it prevailed less in the larger principalities than in the isolated tributary thakurats (same chapter); the Salumbra chief coining "by sufferance" from the mines on his own estate (in the chapter on the mineral products of Mewar); the accession of Umra II in S. 1756, A.D. 1700 (p. 336); Bijolia, Bednore and Kailwa named among "the sixteen superior nobles" of Mewar (pp. 85 and 275); and the Bhil rite of inauguration (pp. 186-187).

7. Where Tod contradicts himself, and why this page says so. On the same two pages Tod first names the two Bhil companions of Bappa as Baleo of Oondree and Dewa of Oguna Panora, and gives Baleo the honour of drawing the teeka of sovereignty with his own blood. He then, describing the ceremony as still performed, writes of "the descendants of Baleo of Oguna and the Oondree Bhil", and assigns the thumb-blood teeka and the seating of the prince to the Oguna chief, with the Oondree Bhil holding the salver of spices and rice. The two passages cannot both be right about which house performs which act. This page therefore states only that a Bhil house applied a blood tilak at the Rana's inauguration, records the disagreement, and does not assert the version in circulation. Tod adds that the full ceremonial had largely lapsed by his day on grounds of cost, Jagat Singh being the last Rana crowned with the ancient magnificence, at ninety lakhs of rupees.

8. Mewar's first-class estates, by the Gazetteer's own figures. Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Rajputana, Superintendent of Government Printing, Calcutta, 1908 — Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Rajputana. Verified from its individual estate entries, pp. 126-143: the titles, families, village counts, annual incomes and tributes of Amet, Asind, Badnor, Begun, Bhindar, Bijolia, Delwara, Deogarh, Gogunda, Kanor, Kotharia, Kurabar and Salumbar, with town populations from the 1901 Census; and the statement that the Rawat of Salumbar, head of the Chondawat family of the Sesodia Rajputs, ranks fourth among the nobles of Mewar. Also verified from it: that in Kota criminal appeals lay to divisional magistrates called faujdars, that elsewhere the Faujdari and Diwani courts were presided over by two officials called hakims, and that in Kota the Maharao alone could pass a death sentence.

Corrections recorded here, so a reader who learned the older version can find them.

• This page previously implied that Mewar's was the only named and dated scheme for grading a Rajput nobility. It is not. Marwar's four orders, defined by the tazim honours, are equally formal and are documented from the state's own bahis, and they are now set out in section 7A.
• This page described Salumber's holder simply as a first-class noble. The Imperial Gazetteer of 1908 states that he ranks fourth among the nobles of Mewar. He is a first-class noble and he is not the senior one.
• The claim that Rajput feudatories could not mint coins does not survive contact with the records, and is not repeated here. It is set out as a trap in section 9, Type G.
• The circulated statement that the Pradhanship of Marwar passed from Auwa to Pokaran reverses the sequence given in the state records, and neither that version nor its reverse is the whole story: the office was hereditary in the Champawat sept and moved between Pokaran, Auwa, Asop and Nimaj.

Still flagged rather than asserted, in addition to items (a) to (g) above: (h) the meanings of khala-bhiksha, prasthaka, skandhaka and marganaka, which the editor of the Rajor inscription declined to give; (i) Hawala as a category of state land, as against the Hawaldar, who is verified as an officer; (j) Bighodi, Mukata or theka, and Dakhala; (k) the state-by-state noble classifications of Jaipur, Bikaner, Kota and Jaisalmer; (l) Daroga-e-Adalat, and the Qazi and Hakim split by Mughal control; (m) the four offices said to have been created under Mughal influence, Daroga-e-Dak, Daroga-e-Sayar, Waqaia-Navees and Munsharif; (n) Jeevika, Madad-e-Maash and Charanaut or Gauchar; (o) the abolition of jagir transfer by Amar Singh II, and the exact year of his accession, given as 1697 here and as A.D. 1700 by Tod; (p) the Jaitawat Thakur of Bagdi in the Marwar coronation; and (q) Rekhabab, Masadati, and the attribution of the abolition of ghasmari to Vijay Singh, against which stands the fact that large Marwar thikanas were still levying gasmari in the nineteenth century.