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 Depen- 
dency. 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 stand- 
point, were as eager as the new men to extend their De- 
pendencies; 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, Brother- 
hoods 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.