Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c28.s10.5

v2.c28.s10.5

At the outset the prospect was almost hopeless for Badan Singh. The position of a recognized political chieftain had yet to be created among a scattered race of peasants, who knew no other leader than the head of each family, and every such family head considered himself as perfectly equal to any other head and refused obedience to him. Even within his own family group, namely the Sinsania branch of the Jats, Badan Singh was not the undisputed head, as Zulkaran and Muhakam, the dispossessed heirs of its eldest line, were alive and ever on the look out for overthrowing him and recovering their patrimony with outside aid. The heads of all the other families clung to their independence as long as possible. We see this social condition vividly illustrated in the Jat Court-poet's description of the tribal contingents that followed Suraj Mal in his battles. The list reads exactly like the separate quotas of ships and men sent by the various independent cities of Greece in support of Agamemnon, in Book II of Iliad. [Sujān Charitra, pp. 75, 184.] War and plunder was their only bond of union.