THE LAST PHASE IN NORTHERN INDIA 173

some similar line of action, one can only sympathise with
villages which were thus forced into the growing Dependency.
 The nucleus of a Dependency having been acquired,
the farm of its revenue could be secured, and the Farmer
could then set himself to consolidate and extend his position.
The tradition of short-term farms and frequent changes
had by now given way. Farms were commonly retained
for life, and might in favourable conditions be renewed
to the heir, so that in English eyes they appeared to be
hereditary tenures; and at any rate it is reasonable to say
that such Farmers were on the way to becoming Chiefs, or
possibly even Kings, on the assumption of a continuance
of the period of anarchy.
On the other hand, the Chiefs, who, though they may
have had centuries of history behind them, had all along
been in the position of Farmers from the strict fiscal standpoint,
 were as eager as the new men to extend their Dependencies;
 and we find cases where titular Rajas had taken
large farms in addition to their traditional areas. Thus
the first English administrators had to deal with Chiefs
who were also Farmers, as well as with Farmers on the way
to become Chiefs, and there is nothing surprising in the fact
that for a time the two classes were treated as one. In
point of fact, the early records of the period tell us very
little about the distinctive features of the Chief's position,
and the only approach to a precise description that I have
found relates to the Doab country just north of Agra, which
formed part of the district then known as Saidibad.! In
this district, the country along the Jumna comprised
mainly Brotherhood-villages, but, further East, Brotherhoods
 were exceedingly rare, and the tenures of the Thakurs,
or Chiefs, were described as of ““infinitely higher antiquity”
than those of any of the peasants in their villages. The
relation between the Chief and the peasants was ‘nearly
that which in European countries subsists between the
landlord and his tenantry”; the peasants did not usually
form a Brotherhood, but were a heterogeneous body of
various castes and tribes; and the Chief contracted for the
revenue with one or more of their number, or else with a
| Rev. Sel., ii. 328 fi.