CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

THE student who approaches the subject of Indian Landtenures, and of the systems under which the State levies a revenue from the land, has probably a vague idea that he is about to enter on a terra incognita or to plunge into some mysterious and unintelligible darkness. A few words of encouragement at the outset seem therefore desirable. I do not wish to pretend that the subject of land-tenure is free from difficulty, still less that it is impossible to be in doubt regarding many questions which have to be decided on a comparison of more or less fragmentary evidence, some of which is traditional and much of it matter of direct or indirect inference. Holt Mackenzie, an eminent authority on Revenue matters-he was Secretary to the first Revenue Commission which originated the Board of Revenue for the North-West Provinces-said that he had been all his life studying land-tenures without understanding them; and the older text-books abound with remarks to the same general effect. But it should be remembered that Holt Mackenzie lived and studied in the early years of the present century, when village-tenures were only just discovered, and when everybody's mind was filled with the one idea, that the only possible form of land-holding was by a landlord who let his lands to tenants at a stated rent. The early forms of property had not been

considered. No Haxthausen, Von Maurer, De Laveleye, H. S. Maine, or Seebohm, had yet arisen to set men thinking and comparing and making use of the materials that were to be found in different countries. Sanskrit and Arabic literature and law were only beginning to be explored, and no one had found out anything about the history of the Aryan conquerors and colonizers of India 1, still less about the so-called Dravidian races which before the Aryan inroad had formed organized States in Central and Southern India, or about the Kolarian tribes whose remnants are still found in that part of Western Bengal called Chota (properly Chutiyá) Nágpur, in the 'Santál Parganas,' and in the Vindhyan Mountains which divide. Upper and Central India.

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Our sources of information have immensely multiplied since those days. Not only have we works whose chief value is that they suggest the right use of materials—tell us how to extract the pure metal from the crude ore of tradition and semi-mythical literature, and to read the meaning of ancient forms and customs, but we have for nearly every district in India valuable materials in the form of 'Manuals' (for the Madras districts) and the volumes known as Settlement Reports' in other Provinces. I may explain that when the Land Revenue Settlement operations of a district (or part of a district) are concluded, when rights have been recorded, and the interests of all classes in the land set down in due form, and when the assessment of the revenue on the field, the village' or the estate (as the case may be), has been determined, the Settlement officer gathers up the results of his work in a printed volume (in English) which contains the history of the district and all peculiarities of its locale, its people and their land-tenures. In preparing this Manual I have studied some dozens of such reports. easily obtained, nor are they

1 I doubt whether Holt Mackenzie had known Col. Tod's Study of the Aryan (Rájput) tribes whose last permanent home was in the

They are not indeed always light reading—especially to

States of modern Rajputána, or whether he knew of Col. Wilk's Study of the Hindu State organization as exemplified in Mysore.

those who have not official knowledge and experience1-but many of them are storehouses of valuable information. At the beginning of the century no such aids were available, for one of the many misfortunes attaching to our first Settlements in Bengal and Madras (Permanent Settlements as they are called) was that no information about tenures and agricultural customs was recorded. The early writers could find in the celebrated Fifth Report on the affairs of the East Indies,' presented to the House of Commons (1812, and since reprinted in Madras), a multitude of unarranged and rather confused details about the landholders in Bengal and North Madras called 'Zamíndárs,' but that is all. And without enlarging on a subject which must be unintelligible till we come to our chapter on land-tenures, I will only say that the tenure of the 'Zamíndár' of Bengal represents a late-if not the latest-development in landinterest, and was the localized outcome of a dying and corrupt system of State management. The study of it threw no light on the real customary tenures of the country.

It is true that I have found a single report of 1796 describing the real natural tenures of the Benares districts: but I have rarely seen it quoted; and all our early authorities, who are responsible for the dissemination of the idea that Indian land-tenures are unintelligible, appear only just to have heard of village' tenures, and to have started with the idea, derived from Bengal, that all land must have some landlord, with tenants under him.

In studying, then, the land-tenures of India, we must be prepared for difficulties, and expect to find lacuna which we cannot fill up or only supply conjecturally and provisionally; but it would be exaggeration to go on saying that a fair amount of clear knowledge on the subject is

There are also volumes of reprints of special reports and papers known as Selections from the Records' of the several Governments. Among the notable Settlement Reports I may instance as samples but there are many others almost

equally valuable) Elliott's Report on Hoshangabad (Central Provinces), Benett's on Gondá (Oudh), Ibbetson on Karnál (Panjab), Roe on Multan (Panjáb), Logan on Malabar (Madras), and Pedder's Bombay Reports.

unattainable1 with moderate study and a fair memory for facts.

And as to the systems under which the Land-Revenue is assessed and afterwards collected, there is no excuse for regarding their study as of excessive difficulty, when there is scarcely a province that has not its Land-Revenue and Tenancy Acts and Regulations besides many hand-books and volumes of circular orders, and special Reports. In the aggregate, no doubt, these documents form an extensive and even a forbidding literature; and they are often written so as to be puzzling to a beginner, or a nonofficial reader. A guide to them is necessary, and it is the express object of my present work to supply the need: whether the object has been in any degree satisfactorily attained, it will be for the reader to judge; but I may explain, that I have endeavoured to give only the essential features of the Acts and orders, confining myself to what is really important and practical, while I have indicated in footnotes the sources whence a more detailed knowledge may be obtained.

May I be permitted also to add a word of general explanation as to my method. It may be said that subjects are treated in too positive or even dogmatic a manner. But in the first place, space is limited, and room could not be afforded for many qualifying and apologetic paragraphs and for repeated drawbacks on the statements made. Moreover, a continued hesitancy, a suggestion of conflicting possibilities and an atmosphere of scepticism and uncertainty, is apt to be puzzling to a beginner; and it is beginners and 'outsiders' to the Revenue official circle that have been kept in mind. I have endeavoured to give my authorities, and to state as fact only what is fairly receivable as such: if any one thinks the facts lead to other

1 If by understanding' landtenures we mean possessing a complete theory of origin and growth, perhaps land-tenures will long remain 'not understood.' But if we mean that we cannot accomplish

the more modest task of getting an adequate knowledge of the facts as they are, or as they have become, then I see no reason for supposing that we are or need be in any such position of difficulty.

conclusions than those I have drawn, he will have no great difficulty in working out another view. Possessed in the first instance of a definite outline of the subject, even if it is too strongly drawn in parts, the student who afterwards goes into detail in Indian official life, will fast enough discover where he would prefer to draw the lines a little more faintly or uncertainly, or where he would desire to give a different colour to the phenomena of landholding customs. The text will always afford a sufficient indication where there is room for an interpretation other than that which it adopts.

With these few prefatory explanations I may at once proceed to the direct subject of the chapter. I have to discuss certain general topics which it will be useful to explain by way of preparation for the study which we are to enter on.

§ 1. The term 'India.'

Sir John Strachey, in his admirable Lectures on India1— a work which I advise every student to read-has already spoken of the dangers attaching to the use of a general term like 'India.' It is geographical only. In no other sense is there any one country which can properly be called 'India.' Within the confines of the area so marked on the map, we have a series of provinces inhabited by different races, and often speaking different languages. The inhabitants of the Panjáb for example-even in the same province are so different, that a Peshawar tribesman in the north could hardly make himself understood at Delhi or Hisár in the south-east. Religious and other differences divide the populations, and racial antipathies are not unknown: Sikhs have no love for Hindustánis, and a Bengálí Bábú 2 at Lahore is regarded as a foreigner almost

'India,' by Sir John Strachey. London Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. (1888). 1 vol.

The term properly means a cadet or younger son of a noble

family, then a native gentleman in general. It is now commonly employed to designate a pleader, attorney, or office-clerk.