They feel that their tenure of land, or of office, is improved by the mischief he does; because every peasant he murders, and every field he throws out of tillage, affects their liege lord in his most tender point, his treasury; and indisposes him to interfere with their salaries, their privileges, or their rents. He who wages this war goes on marrying his sisters or his daughters to the other barons or landholders of the same clan, and receiving theirs in marriage during the whole of his bhûmiâwat,[14] as if nothing at all extraordinary had happened, and thereby strengthening his hand at the game he is playing. Umrâo Singh of Jaklôn in Chandêrî, a district of Gwâlior bordering upon Sâgar,[15] has been at this game for more than fifteen years out of twenty, but his alliances among the baronial families around have not been in the slightest degree affected by it. His sons and his grandsons have, perhaps, made better matches than they might, had the old man been at peace with all the world, during the time that he has been desolating one district by his atrocities, and demoralizing all those around it by his example, and by inviting the youth to join him occasionally in his murderous enterprises. Neither age nor sex is respected in their attacks upon towns or villages; and no Muhammadan can take more pride and pleasure in defacing idols--the most monstrous idol--than a 'bhûmiâwatî' takes in maiming an innocent peasant, who presumes to drive his plough in lands that he chooses to put under the _ban_. In the kingdom of Oudh, this bhûmiâwat is a kind of nursery for our native army; for the sons of Râjpût yeomen who have been trained in it are all exceedingly anxious to enlist in our native infantry regiments, having no dislike to their drill or their uniform. The same class of men in Bundêlkhand and the Gwâlior State have a great horror of the drill and uniform of our regular infantry, and nothing can induce them to enlist in our ranks. Both are equally brave, and equally faithful to their salt--that is, to the person who employs them; but the Oudh Râjpût is a much more tameable animal than the Bundêla. In Oudh this class of people have all inherited from their fathers a respect for our rule and a love for our service. In Bundêlkhand they have not yet become reconciled to our service, and they still look upon our rule as interfering a good deal too much with their sporting propensities.[16] Notes: