India. 1. SOURCES OF INFORMATION. O official authority whatever attaches to this work, or to any statement in it. 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 Much of the information has been derived from the Princes, Noblemen, and Gentlemen whose names are included herein. To each one has been sent, so far as it has been found possible, a prospectus of this work, with a request for information, and with specimens of the form in which that information is desired; and in every case in which that appeal has been responded to, the fullest consideration has been given to the particulars submitted for insertion. It is hoped that, now the work in its experimental form is once before the Indian public, all those who are interested in its accuracy will send their suggestions, whether for additions, or for alterations or corrections, direct to the Editor, care of Messrs. Macmillan and Co., 29 Bedford Street, Covent Garden, London, W.C. It will readily be understood that in a work of such magnitude, involving reference to some thousands of persons, individual correspondence must be impossible; and consequently the Editor, while assuring those who favour him with their communications that these shall receive the most careful attention, hopes that he will be forgiven if he is unable to reply separately to each one. 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 civilised 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 Majesty 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 through the medium of a regular College or Chancery. It is, of course, true that the Foreign Department possesses a mass of more or less confidential information, and thoroughly efficient machinery, for deciding all questions of the kind, when such questions are submitted to, or pressed upon, the notice of Government. But when that is not the case, there seems to be no public authority or accessible record for any of the ordinary Indian titles, or for the genealogy of the families holding hereditary titles. Much confusion has already arisen from this, and more is likely to arise. In the Lower Provinces of Bengal alone, there are at this moment some hundreds of families possessing, and not uncommonly using, titles derived from extinct dynasties or from common repute, yet not hitherto recognised formally by the British Government; and these, sometimes justly, but more frequently perhaps unjustly, are in this way placed in a false and invidious position. The State regulation of all these matters, in a plain and straightforward manner, would undoubtedly be hailed with pleasure in India by princes and people alike. In equal uncertainty is left, in many cases, the position of the descendants of ancient Indian royal and noble families; as also that of the Nobles of Feudatory States, the subjects of ruling and mediatised princes. Then, too, there is endless confusion in the banners, badges, and devices that are borne, either by the custom of the country or by personal assumption, by various families and individuals. Tod's learned work on The Annals of Rájásthán1 taught us long ago that badges and family emblems were as 1 Colonel Tod says: "The martial Rajpoots are not strangers to armorial bearings. . . . The great banner of Mewár exhibits a golden Sun on a crimson field; those of the chiefs bear a Dagger. Amber displays the panchranga, or five-coloured flag. The lion rampant on an argent field is extinct with the State of Chanderi. In Europe these customs were not introduced till the period of the Crusades, and were copied from the Saracens ; while the use of them amongst |
