'The average prince was a god-fearing man.' At heart they were not against the people and the people loved their ruler despite his defects.

There was much wisdom in the ancient Vedic code of Manu, the primordial law giver, which laid down that one-sixth of the punyam (piety) and one-sixth of the papam (sins) of the people accrued to the ruler. It recognised that a king was part saint and part sinner, reflecting both the virtues and the vices of his subjects. In British times, the average prince was no different, but whereas in the past he had always shared the conservatism of his people his education now made him more conscious of the need for change. Some rulers responded to this challenge, others played for time. Faced with subjects who were far happier with a ruler who fed 4000 Brahmins on his birthday or released his prisoners than one who brought in reforms allowing widows to remarry or forbidding the marriage of young girls to older men, they found it easier to stick to Manu's doctrine, balancing a little sin with a little piety.

One fine morning the Nizam said to my grandfather, 'Rama, I think it's high time we sorted out the pearls. I want them all graded.' So they went to the treasury and there they pulled out buckets and buckets and buckets of pearls of all shapes and sizes. First they washed them all in boric acid and then they poured them through these grading machines like you use for grading gravel, so that they were sorted out according to size. Then they were laid out to dry on huge sheets on the roof, covering the entire roof of the palace.

But pearls made up only part of the Nizam's treasures. Some of his jewels he had acquired himself, such as the ten square emeralds 'each the size of a flat egg' bought from a Persian jeweler for eighty lakhs of rupees at the time of the 1911 Delhi Durbar. Some were inherited from his father, Mahbub Ali Pasha - including the famous 162-carat Jacob diamond, which the Nizam had had mounted on a gold base and used as a paperweight. One of the stranger tales that V K Reddy heard from his grandfather, concerned an instruction from the Nizam to reopen the English Palace within the grounds of King Kothi Palace, which had remained closed since the death in 1911 of Mahbub Ali Pasha: 'When my grandfather opened up the cupboards in the bedrooms he found expensive jewelry scattered all along the floors. Mahbub Ali Pasha had carried jewels everywhere in his pockets and given them out here and there was favours. When he died everything had been locked and sealed, the clothes had rotted and the jewels had fallen on the floor.'

After Hyderabad, the finest collections of precious jewels were reputed to lie hidden in the family
toshakhana of the ruling house of Jaipur, the best pieces dating from the time of its close association with the Mughal Court. Every royal family was secretive about these private assets, representing as they did that dynasty's insurance against hard times, but none had better cause than Jaipur to be so and none guarded its secrets more effectively. The family treasures were said to be hidden under a fort perched high above their ancestral home of Amber, the ancient capital of the Kachhwaha Rajputs, itself clinging to the side of a mountain on the edge of the Jaipur plain. The Kachhwaha clean had wrested this land from the original inhabitants, the aboriginal Minas, and it was the chiefs, on the Minas who were entrusted with guarding the treasure - a task their descendants carried out so faithfully that even the ruler himself was only allowed access three times during his tenure of the gadi. That, at least, was the story, for the rulers themselves guarded their secrets just as securely as the Minas kept their treasure.

Kashmir and Gwalior were said to be next in the league table for jewels and other treasures, followed by Baroda and Jodhpur. Sahibzada Ata Muhamed Khan remembers going to see Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir with his uncle and watching the Maharaja measuring emeralds for his sarpech, the jewellery that was worn draped over a turban: 'Most of the leading, jewelers from Calcutta and Bombay were there, but His Highness was very particular about colour and couldn't find what he wanted. My uncle said to him, "Hukum, let's see what you've got in your toshakhana." "What's there to see?" replied His Highness. "There is nothing left." But he called his toshakhana custodian, a young man named Dewan Iqbal Nath, and asked him to bring something. We sat there and a little velvet package which hadn't been cleaned for years was brought in. Inside was a yellow velvet tray which was put before us. On it were about 200 fantastic emerald drops. I've never seen anything like it in my life.

Baroda, too, had some outstanding jewellery, much of it built up by Sayaji Rao's spendthrift predecessors Khande Rao and his brother Mulhar Rao, who had such items as salute cannons and elephant chains cast in silver and gold. Included among their treasures were two sumptuous tapestries of threaded pearls studded with gems, and a single necklace made of enormous diamonds with the 128-carat Star of the South as the centerpiece. A lesser Baroda diamond was the 70-cart Akbar Shah, believed to have formed one of the eyes of the birds on the fabulous peacock throne of the Mughals, later looted by Nadir Shah of Persia at the sack of Delhi in 1739. Perhaps less glittering but just as impressive was the seven-stringed Baroda pearls necklace, with pearls 'almost the size of marbles'.

Patiala, too, had a spectacular pearl necklace but one made up of ropes of black pearls. Then there was a necklace of emeralds 'each the size of a teaspoon' and a breastplate studded with the auspicious number of a thousand and one diamonds. Yadavendra Singh of Patiala was by all accounts a thrifty man but his father was one of the last of the big spenders. This was made possible by the rich, well-irrigated soil of the Punjab, which gave Bhupinder Singh an annual revenue from his subjects of 15 lakhs of rupees, of which at least half went into his privy purse. Maintaining the 11-acre pink sandstone Moti Bagh Palace with its 'bathrooms like ballrooms.' Plus half a dozen other royal residences, together with occupants, staff and dependants numbering four or five thousand swallowed up half a dozen lakhs - but still left the Maharaja with enough funds to indulge himself handsomely. 'The tendency to buy things up en masse was part of the Patiala tradition,' maintains Sardar Malik, who first met the Maharaja in London while serving with the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War: 'The entire fifth floor of the Ritz was occupied by the Maharaja and his suite and the corridors outside were stacked with new suitcases. I asked his ADC what had happened and he said, 'Well, His Highness went to Finnegans today and he bought all this to give as presents when he gets back to Patiala."

The Durbar Hall in Patiala was festooned with crystal furniture, with more crystal furniture and glass stored away in packing cases, which even in the 1940s were still unopened. This all dated back to the time of Bhupinder Singh's great-grandfather and had been bought more or less by accident when the Maharaja entered a well-known Calcutta store owned by a European named Lazarus: 'The Maharaja had with him another Sikh, simply dressed like himself, and they had wandered around the shop examining things and asking Lazarus the price of various items. Lazarus thought they were ignorant peasants wasting his time and he spoke sharply to them. This angered the maharaja, who asked him how much he wanted for the entire contents of the shop; Lazarus, even more irate at what he considered an idiotic enquiry, quoted some relatively low figure - whereupon the Maharaja tuned to his aide and instructed him to pay the man in cash on the spot'.

The Patiala toshakhana itself was filled with knick-knacks bought up during various European shopping sprees - tin trunks with layer upon layer of pearls with diamonds, pearls with rubies, pearls with emeralds, jewels for nuths (nose-rings), jewels for the feet, jewels for the belly-button and for God-knows-what. There was so much of it that I found myself incapable of taking in their beauty. It was like costume or stage jewellery.'

Bhupinder Singh's great rival among the Sikhs was Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala, whose life-style was closer to that of the French monarchs whom he so greatly admired than to that of any oriental prince of old. 'He enjoyed the pleasures and high society of the West.' Declares his grandson. 'But he also enjoyed the company of interesting and attractive young ladies and he brought many back from Europe to stay in Kapurthala as his guests and personal friends, some of the most beautiful women I have every seen.' That these liaisons damaged his reputation in the eyes of the British authorities, there can be no doubt, yet it was equally true that the Maharaja always behaved with the utmost discretion in public. He treated all his guests with great charm and courtesy and retained the friendship of his lady friends even after they had ceased to enjoy the comforts of Jagatjit Palace or Chateau Kapurthala.

A much safer but equally traditional princely indulgence was gastronomy, which in number of states was raised to the level of an art form. Every region in India had its traditional dishes and specialties and this was reflected in the cooking and the kitchens of the royal palace. In the larger establishments every cook had a specialty and might spend his entire working life preparing and refining one particular rice dish, based on a recipe taught him in his youth. Once learned, these recipes remained a closely guarded secret, which was rarely divulged to outsiders. Only when a daughter of the royal house was about to leave the palace would these secrets be passed on - and then only to those who would be accompanying her. Such recipes related not only to food but also to the many forms of semi-alcoholic drinks such as sherbet, which the Mughals had introduced as a substitute for alcohol. In the north there was thandai, a cooling drink based on bhang or Indian hemp; in Rajasthan, various kinds of liqueurs known as ashas, supposedly made up of as many as seventy-five different ingredients as diverse as human blood or crushed pearls and drunk 'mainly for potency'. Ashas were essentially elixirs intended for royalty alone, as were some of the more exotic dishes served up at great feasts, such as the dish whose receipt began: 'Take a whole camel, put a goat inside it and inside the goat a peacock, inside which put a chicken. Inside the chicken put a sand grouse, inside the sand grouse put a quail and finally, a sparrow. Then put the camel in a hole in the ground and steam it'. Even more improbable was a receipt acquired by the present Maharaja of Sailana, who used to travel from state to state with his father collecting traditional recipes: 'There are puris (deep-fried wheat cakes) which would puff up and in certain of the smaller Rajasthan states, they would stick a live bird in the puri, quickly deep-fry it and bring it to the table - where the bird would fly out. It was not for eating, just an extravaganza.

The preparation of paan was another delicacy surrounded by secrecy, 'because paans could have all sorts of potent and expensive ingredients such as gold and pearls'. Paan was also a favoured method of poisoning, and was therefore prepared by only the most trusted servants: 'We were always taught that wherever we used to go we had to take the paan offered to us, open it up an look inside and only then eat it'. The kitchen itself was another obvious source of danger and in earlier days, ' certain animals were kept in the kitchen and their behaviour watched when the food was being cooked. It was said that a peacock cried in a certain way if poison was present in the room'.

Far more damaging than poison, however, was alcohol, which threatened to become virtually an occupational hazard in some quarters. One of the best known causalities was the ruler of the smallest salute state in western India, ' a very intelligent, well-read, handsome man who could not cope with having ideas that were bigger than his state.' Nawab Iqbal Mohamed Khan was among those who tried to persuade him to give up drinking: 'I explained to him that if he was not able to contribute to his own state and to the princely order, it would be a loss to both as he was such an intelligent man. He promised he would give up drinking and he did for a few days - but he could not give it up permanently.

Nevertheless, heavy drinking was far less widespread among rulers themselves than it was among their immediate relatives, particularly their brothers and younger sons - precisely those whom greater professional expertise in state administration made increasingly redundant.

Increasing British influence certainly brought about a change in eating habits, which meant the addition of European kitchens and European or European-trained chefs to palaces: as much for the satisfaction of Westernized palates among ruling families as for visiting Europeans. Jagatjit Singh's Kapurthala naturally had its French cuisine and its French-trained chefs. However, the best cooking was said to be derived from the Mughals, and this Mughlai cooking found its highest expression in the kitchens of the Muslim states.

The finest cuisine in India was said to come from the kitchens of Rampur State.

We had a complete Department of Music called the Arab-e-Nishak. A lot of money was spent on instruments and keeping the musicians happy. Ustad Mushtaq Hussain Khan and Ustad Vilayat Khan were among the great musicians who learned from my grandfather and father. Even the greatest of the Indian musicians, Ustad Allauddin Khan, belonged to Maihar, a small state in Central India, but learned from my grandfather. So too did the best tabla (drum) player, a fellow named Ahmed Jan Tirakhwa, who belonged to Rampur.

This form of patronage was sufficiently widespread to be considered commonplace in many Indian States, whose rulers both encouraged and preserved Indian classical music, dancing and painting to a quite remarkable degree. Many of the most famous musicians and dancers in India today either enjoyed this patronage themselves in their earlier years or were taught by masters who had done so. 'This was patronage in a real sense when a musician feels he is wanted and that his music is being loved.'

Nearly every major salute state and many a minor one, too, had its Gharana or music school where a particular style of music evolved, and every city palace its naubatkhana, the 'drum house' where the palace musicians had their quarters. 'It was generally above the gate, 'so that it overlooked the interior of the palace while the music that was played there could also be heard by the public. At Jaisalmer the naubat was played four times a day, with ragas on the shehnai (reed instrument) accompanied by the nagara (drums) and the sarangi (stringed instrument). His Highness Jawahir Singhji would stand and listen and say, "Wah, wah!" to encourage them. He himself was a great patron of music and would play the harmonium and sing.'

The same patronage extended rather less dramatically to the crafts in many different forms because, asone former explains,''You had to have certain master-craftsmen who were painters or silver-smiths, carpenters or artisans of various types. They were retained as part of the ruler's retinue and lived off the revenue of lands that they were given. In Sawantwadi, for example, we had what were called jindgars or saddlemakers who excelled in embroidery, because in those days saddles, they also used to make other things involving embroidery, such as fans or the gadis on which you sat. It was not only the ruler who got the benefit, because the aristocracy also had to have these things, so the craftsmen thrived.'