This chapter explores which brought ideals of Brahmanical rank to the fore in Indian life, without ever fully supplanting the ideals of the lordly man of prowess. It also explores why the Brahman's and merchant's ideal of a 'pure' dharmic way of life became so influential in the world of the so called caste 'Hindu'. In middle of the eighteenth century there were three main areas of advancement in which Brahmans and Brahman-centred values came increasingly to predominate: in the field of finance, statecraft and war, and ritual arena. In the peshwa daftar records, that is, the Maratha rulers' registers of state transactions and revenue obligations, the Peshwas documented acts of adjudication through which they as Brahman guardians of the realm proclaimed themselves arbiters of other people's jati and varna status. India's dynasts built their power through a drive for cash revenue. The techniques used to spread and tax commercial cash-crop production prefigured the strategies of Britain's colonial revenue machine.