APPENDIX C 
22¢ 
Notes. 
(1) “Hindu.” As explained in Chapter II, Barni uses this word in 
2 narrow sense, to denote the classes above the ordinary peasants, so that 
in fact it is almost a synonym for Chiefs and headmen in this context. 
(2) “From Chief to sweeper.” Az khiita wa baldhar. Balihar is 
not a Persian word, and it is quite safe to follow Blochmann in identifying 
it with the common Hindi name for a low-caste menial, employed in the 
village as a general drudge. In the Upper Doib, which was Barnl's 
country, the balihar is almost always a sweeper by caste,! and, since the 
word is obviously used to denote the lowest rank of the rural population, 
the rendering “sweeper probably gives what was in the writer's mind; 
there is no actual English equivalent. 
The word transliterated provisionally as khiita has not been found 
elsewhere in the literature, and has to be interpreted from the parallel 
passages, which are fairly numerous in Barni. It appears indifferently 
as khiit and kniita, and these cannot be distinguished. The antithesis 
to balahar indicates that the khiit must be looked for among the rural 
aristocracy, and all the passages confirm this. Khit is commonly coupled 
with the headman or muqaddam (e.g. 288, 291, 324, 430, 479, 554), while 
in two passages (288) he is linked with the chaudhrl, or pargana headman, 
as well as with the muqaddam; and his perquisites were on the same 
footing (430) as those of the muqaddam. 
Barnf does not use the word zamindar for a Chief (subject to the King) 
until nearly the end of his book (539, 589), and it never appears in his 
discussions of agrarian policy; we find khiit wherever we should expect 
to find zamindar, and the only reasonable interpretation is that the latter 
word was coming into use during his lifetime, and gradually superseding 
hit, so that the two are in fact Synonymous. If we read zamindir in 
every passage where khiit occurs, we get perfectly good sense; if they are 
not synonyms, then we must hold that the important class of khits, as 
known to Barni, had become absolutely extinct when the next chronicler 
wrote, and that the equally important class of zamndars had mysteriously 
come into existence, a hypothesis as unreasonable as unnecessary. 
The identity of the word khiit is doubtful. Blochmann took it as the 
rare Arabic word. rendered by Steingass as “a limber twig; a corpulent 
man, yet handsome and active,” but did not indicate how such a word 
could come to denote a Chief. The MSS, I have seen do not show the 
vowels, and it is possible that the pronunciation was different, and that 
we are dealing with a word formed independently in India; but, whatever 
be the origin of the word, its meaning in Barni is clearly that of Chief. 
Slochmann arrived by analysis at the correct result, that the phrase in- 
dicates the extremes of rural society, but the rendering “landowners and 
tenants” which he endorsed involves both a logical non-sequitur and an 
aistorical anachronism. 
The suggestion has been made that the word under discussion is really 
[ndian in origin, being identical with the Marathi word khof, which is 
tamiliar in the Konkan; but the fact that Barni wrote the word with two 
Arabic letters (kh and t) makes its derivation from any sanskritic language 
highly improbable. The word khot has not been traced further back than 
! For the balihar’s position, see Rev. Sel., ii. 97.