are of the same tribe as himself, that is, Rajputs; but they are divided into three clans—­ Bundelas, Pawars, and Chandels.  A Bundela cannot marry a woman of his own clan, he must take a wife from the Pawars or Chandels; and so of the other two clans—­no member of one can take a wife from his own clan, but must go to one of the other two for her.  They are very much disposed to fight with each other, but not less are they disposed to unite against any third party, not of the same tribe.  Braver men do not, I believe, exist than the Rajputs of Bundelkhand, who all carry their swords from their infancy.[11]

It may be said of the Rajputs of Malwa and Central India generally, that the Mogul Emperors of Delhi made the same use of them that the Emperors of Germany and the Popes made of the military chiefs and classes of Europe during the Middle Ages.  Industry and the peaceful arts being reduced to agriculture alone under bad government or no government at all, the land remained the only thing worth appropriating; and it accordingly became appropriated by those alone who had the power to do so—­by the Hindoo military classes collected around the heads of their clans, and powerful in their union.  These held it under the paramount power on the feudal tenure of military service, as militia; or it was appropriated by the paramount power itself, who let it out on allodial tenure to peaceful peasantry.  The one was the Zamindari, and the other the Malguzari tenure of India.[12]

The military chiefs, essentially either soldiers or robbers, were continually fighting, either against each other, or against the peasantry, or public officers of the paramount power, like the barons of Europe; and that paramount power, or its delegates, often found that the easiest way to crush one of these refractory vassals was to put him, as such men had been put in Germany, to the ban of the empire, and offer his lands, his castles, and his wealth to the victor.  This victor brought his own clansmen to occupy the lands and castles of the vanquished; and, as these were the only things thought worth living for, the change commonly involved the utter destruction of the former occupants.  The new possessors gave the name of their leader, their clan, or their former place of abode, to their new possession, and the tract of country over which they spread.  Thus were founded the Bundelas, Pawars, and Chandels [sic] upon the ruin of the Chandels of Bundelkhand, the Baghelas in Baghelkhand, or Riwa, the Kachhwahas, the Sakarwars, and others along the Chambal river, and throughout all parts of India.[13]

These classes have never learnt anything, or considered anything worth learning, but the use of the sword; and a Rajput chief, next to leading a gang of his own on great enterprises, delights in nothing so much as having a gang or two under his patronage for little ones.