[Levies.] During the decay of Musalmán rule in Gujarát in the first half of the eighteenth century, shareholders of the garásia class in government villages, who were always ready to increase their power by force, levied many irregular exactions from their more peaceful neighbours, the cultivators or inferior landholders. These levies are known as vol that is a forced contribution or pál that is protection. All have this peculiar characteristic that they were paid by the cultivators of crown lands to petty marauders to purchase immunity from their attacks. They in no case partook of the nature of dues imposed by a settled government on its own subjects. Tora garás, more correctly toda garás, is another levy which had its origin in eighteenth century disorder. It was usually a readymoney payment taken from villages which, though at the time crown or khálsa, had formerly belonged to the garásia who exacted the levy. Besides a readymoney payment contributions in kind were sometimes exacted. [Service Lands.] The second class of superior landholders were those whose title was based on a Musalmán grant. Such grants were either assignments of large tracts of land to the viceroy, district-governors, and nobles, to support the dignity of their position and maintain a contingent of troops, or they were allotments on a smaller scale granted in reward for some special service. Land granted with these objects was called jágír, and the holder of the land jágírdár. In theory, on the death of the original grantee, such possessions were strictly resumable; in practice they tended to become hereditary. No regular payments were required from holders of jágírs. Only under the name of peshkash occasional contributions were demanded. These occasional contributions generally consisted of such presents as a horse, an elephant, or some other article of value. They had more of the nature of a freewill offering than of an enforced tribute. Under the Musalmáns contributions of this kind were the only payments exacted from proprietors of the jágírdár class. But the Maráthás, in addition to contributions, imposed on jágírdárs a regular tribute, similar to that paid by the representatives of the original class of superior Hindu landholders. Under Musalmán rule great part of Gujarát was always in the hands of jágírdárs. So powerful were they that on two occasions under the Áhmedábád kings, in A.D. 1554 and A.D. 1572, the leading nobles distributed among themselves the entire area of the kingdom. [694] Again, during the eighteenth century, when Mughal rule was on the decline, the jágírdárs by degrees won for themselves positions of almost complete independence. [695]