The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c21.11

c21.11

Even in the North where, thanks to the continuous influx from the North-west, Muslim influence was much deeper and more extensive, there were a few small tracts and one large area which retained their autonomy for long. In the North, There Hindu institutions survived, of course, in a modified form. The subject is too vast to be treated here in detail but a few instances from a late period may be given to illustrate the persistence of the Hindu system. As late as the seventeenth century A.D., Khurdâ, a small, rather primitive district on the borders of Orissa and Golkuṇḍâ, modelled its army on the Hindu system which had become antiquated by that time.¹ In the seventeenth century, again, the small state of Kiṣṭwâḍ to the south of Kashmir, close to the Puñjâb border, had a fiscal system which bore some affinity to that of the Hindus. Every customer had to pay four rupees per two seers of saffron purchased. Fines, always heavy and particularly severe in the case of rich folk, formed the greatest source of the public income.² The annals of Kâṅgṛâ in the north-eastern Puñjâb, which, in spite of 52 sieges did not surrender to Musalmânas until 1620 A.D., disclose the old Hindu feudal-federalism in full force. The ‘zemindârs,’ as the Hindu chiefs are called by Muslim historians, stood in relations of suzerainty and vassalage to one another.³ The Bâra Bhuñyas or Twelve Landholders who exercised sway in some Bengal tracts in a semi-independent capacity after the Muslim conquest and who created trouble for Muslim rulers until the seventeenth century, also organised themselves, rather loosely, after the traditional Hindu system.¹