because officers expended the whole of their incomes in religious ceremonies, or works of ornament and utility, and left their families in hopeless dependence upon the chief in whose service they had laboured all their lives, while they had been educating their sons exclusively with the view of serving that chief in the same capacity that their fathers had served him before them. It is in this case, and this alone, that the law of primogeniture is in force in India.[21] Among Muhammadans, as well as Hindoos, all property, real and personal, is divided equally among the children;[22] but the duties of an office will not admit of the same subdivision; and this, therefore, when hereditary, as it often is, descends to the eldest son with the obligation of providing for the rest of the family. The family consists of all the members who remain united to the parent stock, including the widows and orphans of the sons or brothers who were so up to the time of their death.[23] The old 'chobdâr', or silver-stick bearer, who came with us from the Râjâ, gets fifteen rupees a month, and his ancestors have served the Râjâ for several generations. The Dîwân, who has charge of the treasury, receives only one thousand rupees a year, and the Bakshî, or paymaster of the army, who seems at present to rule the state as the prime favourite, the same. These latter are at present the only two great officers of state; and, though they are, no doubt, realizing handsome incomes by indirect means, they dare not make any display, lest signs of wealth might induce the Râjâ or his successors to treat them as their predecessors in office were treated for some time past.[24] The Jâgîrdârs, or feudal chiefs, as I have before stated, are almost all of the same family or class as the Râjâ, and they spend all the revenues of their estates in the maintenance of military retainers, upon whose courage and fidelity they can generally rely. These Jâgîrdârs are bound to attend the prince on all great occasions, and at certain intervals; and are made to contribute something to his exchequer in tribute. Almost all live beyond their legitimate means, and make up the deficiency by maintaining upon their estates gangs of thieves, robbers, and murderers, who extend their depredations into the country around, and share the prey with these chiefs, and their officers and under-tenants. They keep them as _poachers_ keep their _dogs_; and the paramount power, whose subjects they plunder, might as well ask them for the best horse in the stable as for the best thief that lives under their protection.[25]