In remarking the curious coincidence between the habits, notions, and governments of Europe in the Middle Ages, and those of Rajasthan, it is not absolutely necessary we should conclude that one system was borrowed from the other; each may, in truth, be said to have the patriarchal form for its basis. I have sometimes been inclined to agree with the definition of Gibbon, who styles the system of our ancestors the offspring of chance and barbarism. “Le système féodal, assemblage monstrueux de tant de parties que le tems et l’hazard ont réunies, nous offre un objet très compliqué: pour l’étudier il faut le décomposer.”[3.1.4] This I shall attempt. The form, as before remarked, is truly patriarchal in these States, where the greater portion of the vassal chiefs, from the highest of the sixteen peers to the holders of a _charsa_[3.1.5] of land, claim affinity in blood to the sovereign.[3.1.6] The natural seeds are implanted in every soil, but the tree did not gain [132] maturity except in a favoured aspect. The perfection of the system in England is due to the Normans, who brought it from Scandinavia, whither it was probably conveyed by Odin and the Sacasenae, or by anterior migrations, from Asia; which would coincide with Richardson’s hypothesis, who contends that it was introduced from Tatary. Although speculative reasoning forms no part of my plan, yet when I observe analogy on the subject in the customs of the ancient German tribes, the Franks or Gothic races, I shall venture to note them. Of one thing there is no doubt—knowledge must have accompanied the tide of migration from the east: and from higher Asia emerged in the Asi, the Chatti, and the Cimbric Lombard, who spread the system in Scandinavia, Friesland, and Italy. =Origin of Feuds.=—“It has been very common,” says the enlightened historian of the Feudal System in the Middle Ages, “to seek for the origin of feuds, or at least for analogies to them, in the history of various countries; but though it is of great importance to trace the similarity of customs in different parts of the world, we should guard against seeming analogies, which vanish away when they are closely observed. It is easy to find partial resemblances to the feudal system. The relation of patron and client in the republic of Rome has been deemed to resemble it, as well as the barbarians and veterans who held frontier lands on the tenure of defending them and the frontier; but they were bound not to an individual, but to the state. Such a resemblance of fiefs may be found in the Zamindars of Hindustan and the Timariots of Turkey. The clans of the Highlanders and Irish followed their chieftain into the field: but their tie was that of imagined kindred and birth, not the spontaneous compact of vassalage.”[3.1.7]