Ref 920 L57 BY SPECIAL PERMISSION DEDICATED ΤΟ HER MOST GRACIOUS MAJESTY Victoria QUEEN EMPRESS OF INDIA 89725 it. INTRODUCTION 1.-SOURCES OF INFORMATION. No official authority whatever attaches to this work, or to any statement in The Editor has received the most kind and valuable assistance from all those Indian officials who have charge of matters relating to Dignities and Titles; but he is alone responsible for the contents of The Golden Book of India. Much of the information has been derived from the Princes, Noblemen, and Gentlemen whose names are included herein. The task of compiling this much-needed work has been of far greater difficulty than was expected. Some of the difficulty has been due to its novelty; for among those who have sent information regarding themselves and their families, there has naturally been little uniformity in method or scale. This difficulty will, it is anticipated, soon disappear. But the chief difficulty has been owing to the fact that India stands alone among civilized nations in possessing no special Department, College, or Chancery, charged with the duty -a very necessary duty from the point of view alike of expediency and of national dignity-of recording and certifying national honours and titles, of regulating their conferment, and of controlling their devolution where hereditary. The Foreign Department of the Government of India, being that Department which has charge of the relations of the Paramount Power with the Feudatory States and their Rulers, naturally and properly directs so much of this business of State as cannot by any possibility be shirked. But the question of the very necessary establishment of a Heralds' College, or a Chancery of Dignities, has only once (in 1877) been seriously faced-and then its solution was postponed. The results of this neglect are already deplorable, and must ere long receive the attention of the Government of India. Indian titles are officially defined to be, either by grant from Government, i. e. a new creation by Her Imperial ajesty the Queen Empress through her representative; or "by descent, or by well-established usage." The Government alone can be the judge of the validity of claims, and of their relative strength, in the case of titles acquired by "descent" or by "well-established usage. And it is clear that this Royal Prerogative, to be properly used, ought to be exercised openly and publicly hrough the medium of a regular College or Chancery. It is, of course, true hat the Foreign Department possesses a mass of more or less confidential nformation, and thoroughly efficient machinery, for deciding all questions of the kind, when such questions are submitted to, or pressed upon, the notice f Government. But when that is not the case, there seems to be no public hority or accessible record for any of the ordinary Indian titles, or for the genealogy of the families holding hereditary titles. Much confusion has already sen from this, and more is likely to arise. In the Lower Provinces of Bengal deme, there are at this moment some hundreds of families possessing, and not Incommonly using, titles derived from extinct dynasties or from common repute, yet not hitherto recognized formally by the British Government; these, sometimes justly, but more frequently perhaps unjustly, are in this placed in a false and invidious position. The State regulation of all t matters, in a plain and straightforward manner, would undoubtedly be ha with pleasure in India by princes and people alike. In equal uncertainty is left, in many cases, the position of the descenda of ancient Indian royal and noble families; as also that of the Nobles Feudatory States, the subjects of ruling and mediatized princes. Then, too, there is endless confusion in the banners, badges, and dev that are borne, either by the custom of the country or by personal assumpti by various families and individuals. Tod's learned work on The Annals Rájásthán1 taught us long ago that badges and family emblems were characteristic of Rajput chivalry as of the feudalism of Europe-appealing similar sentiments, and similarly useful for historical and genealogical poses. To this day hundreds of Chiefs and country gentlemen in Rajputa in Central India, in Káthiáwár, and in many other parts, use their ances devices in their seals or accompanying their signature. Thus every pe Thakur (as well as Chiefs of higher degree), from Oudh in the East to Western Sea, who can trace his descent from the proud Chauhan clan Rajputs that gave the last Hindu Emperors to Delhi and Ajmir, still clad his ancestral right to the Chauhan santak, or device on seal and for signat called the "Chakra." Figures of Hanuman (the Monkey God), of the Sac Peacock, and of the Sacred Garur or Eagle, take the place, in the heraldi the East, of the lions, the leopards, and the fleur-de-lys of the more elabo and artificial coat-armour of the West. The kulcha, or "lucky chape (biscuit), with the silver quatrefoils, on the green flag of the Nizám, red oriflamme of the "Sun of the Hindus" (the Maháráná of Udaipur), falcon of Márwár, the Gangetic dolphin of Darbhanga, the white and g stripes of the late Sir Salar Jang, and many other hereditary devices emblems, have long been and still are familiar in India. But there s to be no authority by whom the use of such emblems is directed or control nor has the Government of India ever had the prudence to avail itself of rich store of revenue that might easily, and indeed (from the historical genealogical point of view) usefully, be raised from the fees and duties derived from the extended use of armorial bearings. It is hoped that publication of this work may have some influence in inducing the Governt of India to establish that very necessary institution, a Heralds' Colleg Chancery of Dignities, in connection with its Political Department perhaps better, to petition Her Majesty to attach a duly-constituted In Department to the College of Arms in London under the Garter King Arms. In the existing circumstances-it may be hoped only temporarily exis -described above, the Editor has felt constrained, very reluctantly in cases, to decline to insert the particulars of any titles that have not been or less formally recognized by the Government of India, except in about ha dozen very special cases, where there could not by any possibility be any d of the authenticity of the claims. For instance, in the case of the Raik 1 Colonel Tod says:-"The martial Rajpoots are not strangers to armorial bearing The great banner of Mewár exhibits a golden Sun on a crimson field; those of the chief a Dagger. Amber displays the panchranga, or five-coloured flag. The lion rampant argent field is extinct with the State of Chanderi. In Europe these customs were troduced till the period of the Crusades, and were copied from the Saracens; while the them amongst the Rajpoot tribes can be traced to a period anterior to the war of Tr the Mahabharat, or Great War, twelve hundred years before Christ, we find the hero B exulting over his trophy, the banner of Arjoona, its field adorned with the figure of the Hanuman. These emblems had a religious reference amongst the Hindus, and were take their mythology, the origin of all devices.' —Annals of Rájásthán, vol. i. pp. 123, 124. |
