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THE
GOLDEN
BOOK
OF
INDIA
A
GENEALOGICAL
AND BIOGRAPHICAL
DICTIONARY OF THE RULING
PRINCES,
CHIEFS,
NOBLES,
AND OTHER
PERSONAGES,
TITLED
OR
DECORATED, OF THE
INDIAN
EMPIRE
WITH AN
APPENDIX FOR CEYLON
BY
Sir
ROPER
LETHBRIDGE,
K.C.I.E.
LONDON
SAMPSON
LOW,
MARSTON
&
COMPANY
LIMITED
flnbltsbtrs
to
%
|nbta
@ffi«
/
1900
#
BY
SPECIAL
PERMISSION
DEDICATED
TO
HER MOST
GRACIOUS
MAJESTY
Victoria
QUEEN
EMPRESS
OF INDIA
258460
INTRODUCTION
1.—
Sources of Information.
No
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
TJie
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
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,
title*
derived
from extinct
dynasties
or
from
common
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