ABSTRACT

We were in touch with the Princes; for between them and ourselves there flowed a two-way traffic of rights and obligations. But with the subjects of the Princes we had no contact; each Prince being an autocrat in his subordinate realm. His absolutism to be sure might be tempered, and was, but tempered by usages and traditions inseparable from and implicit in the ancient notion of Raj. Lower down, under the heading of ‘A seventeen-gun Prince’, I have introduced Dholpur, and my picture is not only of a Native State in India; it is of India in a native state.