n, in religious and other festivals,
personal servants, and hereditary retainers. They fall into balance,
incur heavy debts, and estate after estate is put up to auction, and
the proprietors are reduced to poverty. They say, that four times
more of these families have gone to decay in the half of the
territory made over to us in 1801, than in the half reserved by the
Oude sovereign; and this is, I fear, true. They named the families--I
cannot remember them.

In Oude, the law of primogeniture prevails among all the tallookdars,
or principal landholders; and, to a certain extent, among the middle
class of landholders, of the Rajpoot or any other military class. If
one co-sharer of this class has several sons, his eldest often
inherits all the share he leaves, with all the obligations incident
upon it, of maintaining the rest of the family.

The brothers of Soorujbulee, above named, do not pretend to have any
right of inheritance in the share of the lands he holds; but they
have a prescriptive right to support from him, for themselves and
families, when they require it. This rule of primogeniture is,
however, often broken through during the lifetime of the father, who,
having more of natural affection than family pride, divides the lands
between his sons. After his death they submit to this division, and
take their respective shares, to descend to their children, by the
law of primogeniture, or be again subdivided as may seem to them
best; or they fight it out among themselves, till the strongest gets
all. Among landholders of the smallest class, whether Hindoos or
Mahommedans, the lands are subdivided according to the ordinary law
of inheritance.

Our army and other public establishments form a great "safety-valve"
for Oude, and save it from a vast deal of fighting for shares in
land, and the disorders that always attend it. Younger brothers
enlist in our regiments, or find employment in our civil
establishments, and leave their wives and children under the
protection of the elder brother, who manages the family estate for
the common good. They send the greater part of their pay to him for
their subsistence, and feel assured that he will see that they are
provided for, should they lose their lives in our service. From the
single district of Byswara in Oude, sixteen thousand men were, it is
said, found to be so serving in our army and other establishments;
and from Bunoda, which adjoins it to the east, fifteen thousand