Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c27.s1.6

v2.c27.s1.6

Grants to Brāhmans and Devotees.—The Brahmans, Sannyasis, and Gosains are not behind those professional flatterers, the Bards; and many a princely name would have been forgotten but for the record of the gift of land. In Mewar, the lands in *sasan*, or religious grants, amount in value to one-fifth of the revenue of the State, and the greater proportion of these has arisen out of the prodigal mismanagement of the last century. The dilapidated state of the country, on the general pacification in A.D. 1818, afforded a noble opportunity to redeem in part these alienations, without the penalty of denunciation attached to the resumer of sacred charities. But death, famine, and exile, which had left but few of the grantees in a capacity to return and reoccupy the lands, in vain coalesced to restore the fisc of Mewar. The Rana dreaded a “ sixty thousand [509] years' residence in hell,” and some of the finest land of his country is doomed to remain unproductive. In this predicament is the township of Menal,¹ with 50,000 bighas (16,000 acres), which with the exception of a nook where some few have established themselves, claiming to be descendants of the original holders, are condemned to sterility, owing to the agricultural proprietors and the rent-receiving Brahmans being dead; and apathy united to superstition admits their claims without inquiry.