## ERRATA.

Page. Line.

26, 7, from below, *for* "this however," read "this being however."

27, 8, before "that the," *insert* "again, can it be doubted."

31, 8, from below, *for* "eight," *read* "eighth."

32, 2, from below, *for* "karikia," *read* "karika."

33, 15, from below, *for* "Bat," *read* "Bath."

35, 14, *for* "Minshen," *read* "Minsheu."

36, 3, *for* "Minshen," *read* "Minsheu."

39, 7, after "ounce," *insert* "or 218·75 grains."

50, 2, for "phenomenon," read "phenomena."

18, for "inspection," read "an inspection."

64, 8, for "or it may be revised," *read* "or, it may be, revived."

72, 2, from below, *for* "on the," *read* "and on the."

83, 3, for "or square cubits," *read* "or 13609·5556 square cubits."

86, 18, for "indebted for," *read* "indebted to the patriarchs for."

20, for "from the Jews," *read* "from their descendants the Jews."

88, 4, from below, *for* "the freedom," *read* "that the freedom."

GEOGRAPHICAL

AND
STATISTICAL MEMOIR

OF
THE KONKUN.

THE REVENUE AND LAND TENURES

OF THE
WESTERN PART OF INDIA,

CONSIDERED WITH

REFERENCE TO THEIR FIRST INSTITUTION AND PRESENT WORKING.

BY MAJOR T. B. JERVIS,

ENGINEERS, E. I. C. S.

RE-PRINTED FROM THE JOURNAL OF THE BOMBAY GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY FOR MAY, 1840.

CALCUTTA:
BAPTIST MISSION PRESS, CIRCULAR ROAD.

1840.

HISTORICAL
AND
GEOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT
OF THE
Western Coast of India.

REVENUE AND LAND TENURES.

"The love of things ancient doth argue staidness; but levity and want of experience maketh apt unto innovations. That which wisdom did first begin and hath been with good men long continued, challength allowance of them that succeed, although, it plead for itself nothing. That which is new, if it promise not much, doth fear condemnation before trial; until trial, no man doth acquit or trust it, what good soever it pretend and promise: so that in this kind there are few things known to be good, till such time as they grow to be ancient." Hooker's Ecclesiastical polity, vol. 2, page 27.

THE amount, collection, and appropriation of the Revenues of every state is as intimately connected with the individual welfare of the people, as the stability and improvement of the Government. The extent of happiness or misery attendant on an equitable system of finance, or the introduction and continuance of an injudicious or oppressive assessment, is rarely understood until it has been long in operation, and those effects which are referable to remote causes, but little appreciated, unless fraught with some immediate danger or distress, in which case it is frequently impracticable to trace the progress of any evil to its true source: hence it becomes obligatory to propose a remedy which has this singular disadvantage, that it has yet to be tried, and is therefore inexpedient and doubtful in proportion as the origin of the evil to be obviated is remote and uncertain.

The foregoing observation arises out of the consideration of Indian Revenue, which is either depreciated, or diminished, to an amount

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that bespeaks little for the financial wisdom of the Hindus or Mahomedans, or for those legislative measures which have paralyzed the energies of the people, and brought them to such a condition that they can pay no more, without sacrificing what is indispensable to their very subsistence,—a condition of such complicated embarassment as calls for immediate relief.

The revenues of the state in India being chiefly drawn from the land, it might be supposed, since the mass of the people follow agriculture in a greater or less degree, that the taxes would bear generally and equitably on every individual member of the community. The principle of the Hindu law allotted the far greater burthen to the middling and inferior classes; the Mahomedans wrung from the people as much as they could take, with certain reservations in favor of those of like persuasion, leaving every individual to settle with their agents for as much beyond that amount, as these agents thought fit to demand: this gave rise to a new branch of revenue, which was very commodiously levied under the comprehensive word *sayer*. The land revenue, the *sayer*, with the imposts on commerce by land and by water, compose the general amount of taxes without any express or even intentional view to the expences of the Government. The objects of the *sayer* being indefinite and variable throughout all parts of India, the items and proceeds have undergone modification in accordance with the spirit of the ruling power, and present with other absurdities of Indian finance, a plain and ready solution of the motives to that chicanery, which runs through every department and political measure of native governments. In its train we may perceive the corruption, venality, mendacity, and suspicion, which operate to the destruction of every honorable and virtuous principle. To over-reach and deceive the members of Government, was always considered as inherent in the character of the subject, as it was known to be habitual to the officers appointed to the realization of the revenue, or consistent with the policy mutually observed between all native princes and their dependents.

Of the four heads under which revenue was collected, the first, or assessment on land, was the amount exacted by the state; the second, or *sayer*, by the zumeendars, patels, and officers deputed to administer the general affairs of the villages, districts, provinces, or principality; the third and fourth, were usually assigned to some favorite, relative, or dependent, of the ruling authorities, and were therefore liable to great abuses. If there were no other evidence to this effect, the appropriation of the second item of Revenue by the

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zumeendars and revenue agents of the former native governments would establish the proprietary right of the sovereign to the soil from which the principal item was derived, for these officers in the first instance, acquired their rights in virtue of their masters; and yet, when the Mharattas obtained the sovereignty, the prince observing that the people paid a great deal to the revenue and district officers, over and above the fixed land revenue, required the full amount of land revenue and *sayer* to be brought into the accounts of the public resources. The same rule of exaction however was persevered in by the subordinate agents, in a new form, as *Babtees*, and other imposts; in plain English, douceurs, official presents, first-fruits, and private cesses, required for the temporary managers and farmers of districts, and in this predicament, overwhelmed with the most impolitic and vexatious burthens, the late Peshwa's dominions came into the hands of the British Government, partly as we have already seen, by cessions, but much more as acquisitions made during the war with the last prince who exercised that office.

We have seen the Revenue collected under its first simple form; secondly, the increased taxation, by the addition of *sayer*, or of variable imposts; thirdly the land revenue, *sayer*, and customs further increased by the imposition of *Babtees*, *Chur*, and so forth, vexatious cesses without any fixed definition, commuted at will, for money or service.

In this were intermixed a thousand questions of right dependent on the first infringement of the sovereign's demands, and the ryot's or cultivator's dues: the village, district, or provincial officers, were involved in consequence, in the most complicated disputes for their share of the *sayer*, which had either been overlooked, or winked at, in the emergencies of their bounden superiors. Thus in the partition of property by descent according to Hindu, or Mahometan law, fraud and falsehood became necessary to the possession, maintenance, or security, of claims which had no real foundation either in justice or sound policy. The ingenuity of the natives has clothed this subject in all the seeming legality and plausibility of a substantial and authorized inheritance, and even disposed many of our most talented countrymen to award to them the indefeasible and original property in the soil, than which there can be nothing more inconsistent or incorrect; for if we suppose any proprietary right to vest in the zumeendars, or superior landlords, it must resolve itself finally into the proprietary right of the highest and most powerful landlord, and that the Sovereign.

B 2

4

It appears from all the ancient grants of land which have yet
been discovered, that the Sea customs and transit duties came also
under the one head of sayer, and as such, were recognized by the
several members of the Bengal Government, in their examination of
existing native records, at the time the Marquis Cornwallis suggested
his memorable reforms. Among other curious documents which
fell into my hands, were two in the possession of a Purbhoo family
in the Ushtummee district, containing an account of the revenues
drawn by the Moghul Government from the Tul Konkun*, which
is explained by the best informed natives to mean all the tract from
Duman to its southern boundary, or the Savitree river; it is stated
to be eleven lacs of luhree, each of one-third of a rupee. At this rate
upwards of 3¼ lacs of rupees were drawn from the land alone, and, it
being the practice at that time, to levy at most only one-tenth†, we
may judge how much the revenue has fallen off by the addition of
the sayer branch. According to the official returns, the collective
amount of land revenue of the northern and southern zillahs,
Salsette, Bombay, and islands, was rupees 17,89,200, in 1820-21,
and this levied in the acknowledged proportion of one-third, in
many parts even one-half, on a much greater surface of land than
formerly; allowing for the revenue of Angria’s country and the
deductions for territory acquired from the Jowar chieftain, the tenth
of the produce would at the former date give thirty-five lacs, which
is just about equivalent to twice the land revenue now derived. Nay,
in strictness it should properly shew a far greater deficiency, for
those productive diluvial tracts which have been recovered from the
sea and rivers by the natural and gradual depositions of silt and loam,
accumulated in the course of the last 400 years. In fact, the far
greater produce of those districts of Tul Konkun which-have recent-
ly been removed from the charge of the Collector of the southern,
to that of the northern zillah, is obtained from such diluvial deposits,
and the progress of these appears to have been going on in the
Konkun and Malabar, as in Goojrat, Kattiwar, and Kuch, with
much greater rapidity, during the last 200 years, than previously :

* I have found an exact explanation of this geographical division in the treaty between Seevajee and the Emperor Shah Jehan's viceroy in 1632, that he should be allowed the whole of Tul Konkun, that is the districts dependant on Dowlatabad or Ahmednuggur, as holding of the Emperor, if he would relinquish all claim to the territory dependent on that fortress above the ghauts, and desist from rebellion. It could not mean the Dhabal Soobha, over which he had no authority.

† This will be clearly proved in the sequel.

5

and by reason of the vellard, or causeway, constructed between the
Islands of Bombay and Salsette, in 1801, will doubtless be found, on
examination, to have progressed unusually quickly all along those
parts of the coast, which form the outline of the great sound in
which these islands are situated. It is more particularly observable
on both sides of the Amba, or Nagotna river, the west coast of the
Khyrunee muhal; Oorun or Caranja Island, now almost completely
joined to the main land; Troomba or Trombay, which is also separat-
ed now by a very shallow channel, and the inundated tracts on the
west side of the Island of Salsette. In the large maps of the
Okliseer, Broach, and Surat Collectorates, the boundary lines of the
Nurbudda, Taptee, and other streams are distinctly seen to have
extended far over those fertile plains, which now support a rich and
industrious population.

In Kattiwar and Kuch also, I noted the progressive retreat
of the sea which has left extensive wastes and morasses, strongly
impregnated with salts and deleterious substances, that may still for a
long time retard its occupation by the husbandman: but we are
warranted by the similar appearance and character of the soil in
many other parts of Goojrat and Kattiwar, in concluding that the
same difficulties stood in the way of the first tenants in remote
ages, which have nevertheless been gradually surmounted, and the
lands brought, even now, into some state of productiveness. The
soil about Kaira, and on either side of the Saburmuttee, for a great
distance from the gulph of Cambay, is extremely poor at great
depths, and when analyzed, proves the existence of salts and other
matters, indicative of its having been, some centuries ago, much in
the same state as we now find the great Run which divides Goojrat
from Kutch. In the infancy of society, there may have been a far
larger portion of the earth occupied by water, which either by
physical causes removed from our apprehension, or adventitious
circumstances dependent on the disintegration of rocks and forests,
perhaps, in no inconsiderable degree on the industry and ingenuity of
man, have been filled up and confined to their present narrow limits,
and this, most happily, in a measure correspondent to that great in-
crease of the human species which obtains under the growth and ex-
tension of civilization and security. Even in the memory of many na-
val officers, still living, we may find this work to have advanced con-
siderably on all the line of coast: where any such cause has effected a
change, as in the harbour of Bombay, we might be disposed to assign
it exclusively to these circumstances; but on the open coast of

6

Malabar, no such reason can be averred, nor can it be imagined that any thing short of an earthquake should so have uplifted the vast level tract of the Run, as to occasion the Bunas and Loonee rivers to be lost altogether, even far inland. The first step appears to be the accumulation of banks of sand at the mouth of the rivers, or bays, by the mutual and conflicting influence of currents or tides, and strong winds from the southwest. The bars being thus begun, accommodate themselves imperceptibly to the outline of the nearest rocks, till they have formed a mass, more than equivalent to resist the joint force of the ebb tide and the entire depth of the stream: the debris of the hills soon fill up the lateral swamps and boggy tracts, by the deposition of the mud and silt which is brought down by the periodical rains, year after year, and kept suspended in the water, till the ebb tide, gradually more and more straightened in its velocity, where the depth is diminished, resigns the earthy matter to be formed in a few seasons, into fields, and habitable domains of the greatest value.

These facts concur to prove, that in all that diluvial tract which was formerly designated Tul Konkun, there was much less land in cultivation, than at present, and that the cultivators could afford in reality to pay more than they do now, although the Government share of the produce was but one-tenth, for the value and fruits of the soil being enhanced, in proportion as the labourer could afford to lay out his skill and capital in bringing that little forward, the Government found their interest in the receipt of the land revenue alone, and had this system been followed up, not all the artifice and priestcraft of the Brahmins, nor all the cunning of the harpies, who under the wing of the Mahomedan and Hindu conquerors, successively directed the financial affairs of their governments, could have wrung from the people the unjustifiable cesses, which have so demoralized and disgraced both them and their oppressors. They would then have acquired sufficient political strength to withstand those demands, which have been complied with, entirely through the pusillanimity of a wretched and impoverished condition.

The total area* of the territory now under consideration is 13,265

* The area of the North Konkun, prior to 1830, was 4,524 square miles; the area of the south Konkun, 5,232; the Portuguese territories, 1,402 square miles including the Provincias del Norte de Damao: the Jowar raja's country, 517; Angria's, 211; the Hubshee's, 279; the Bowra chiefs, 157; and Sawunt warree, 944 square miles. These areas are all computed with the greatest possible care from an exact survey and boundaries, executed under my orders.

7

square miles; that is, 84,89,600 English acres*, of which there are, at present, 9,08,691 acres under cultivation, and probably 19,21,175 acres adapted to tillage, including all that has been abandoned or neglected from former times; the amount of unproductive land, rocks, rivers, and insalubrious forests, forms about two-thirds of the whole of that which is cultivated: the proportion producing rice may be 5,14,508 acres, the bhurrur, wurkus, and doongur or hill land, on which a variety of small corn is raised, may be estimated at 3,94,183 acres; hence, allowing for the rice land, at a medium, eight and a half rupees per acre, and for the hill land, rupees three and two annas per acre English, it is perfectly clear that the soil has greatly deteriorated in fruitfulness, as well as in value†; and that what has been gained to the state in the very objectionable shape of sayer, and other indefinite imposts, setting aside those payments and cesses which are perpetuated to the persons and officers of the district and village officers, is far less than might have been derived from a just and extremely light assessment on the land itself. Let it be inquired how far the very small amount of

* The following is a more detailed specification of the extent of arable, available and unproductive land, which will be found in the 1st vol. of my Statistical Tables. Rice lands, North Konkun, 3,27,093 beegahs; Kolwun, Jowar raja's, 4,309 beegahs; Angria's, 27,198 beegahs; Hubshee's, 13,266; Bowrekur's, 2,147; Sawunt warree, 13,872; South Konkun, 1,30,966; Goa and Duman, 20,624;—Total Rice land, 5,39,475 beegahs; or 5,14,508 English statute acres. So also the beegahs of land, 5,39,475 beegahs and bhurrur are in each, North Konkun, 1,37,013; Kolwun, Hill land or wurkus and bhurrur are in each, North Konkun, 1,37,013; Kolwun, Hill land or wurkus and bhurrur are in each, North Konkun, 1,37,013; 34,951; Goa and Duman 51,963; the Southern Konkun zillab, 1,58,390; Total 4,13,312 beegahs of wurkus or bhurrur land, or 3,94,183 English statute acres, including all land in actual cultivation during any one year, for there is actually a vast deal more bhurrur or wurkus land cleared, on which, by alternate fallows, a crop is raised every third, fifth, or seventh year; but such fallow, or unoccupied land, does not pay revenue. This may give a faint idea of a poorly cultivated district which cannot boast of so much land under tillage as Sweden, the least productive of all Europe, for an equal extent, since there the lands under culture equal one-eighth of the entire area, rocks, rivers and forests included.

† The actual land rental on an average of 15 years for the North and South Konkun, all extra cesses inclusive, gives on 5,14,508 statute acres rice land at 3 Rs. 8 ansas, .................................... 18,00,778 4,49,896 And on 3,94,183 wurkus, or arable hill land, at 1 R. 4 ansas, ....... Total average land revenue about 231 Rupees per square mile of 640 statute acres, .................................................. 22,50,674

* Which, supposing the former or rice land at a medium valuation, capable of yielding 83 Rs., and the latter 3 Rs. 2 ansas would give an outturn of produce in the ratio of five to two of the foregoing.

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oppressive Mahratta exactions humanely and considerably remitted by the British Collectors, has conduced to stimulate industry, and remove that distress and uncertainty which attended their collection, and it will be well understood how infinitely more happy, secure and independent, the cultivator must have formerly been, and still might be, by reverting to the simple, judicious, and advantageous principle of a fair and moderate tax on a far greater quantity of land, than that which is now under tillage. By this means we should see the whole surface of the country, every little waste and nook, every patch and hill, crowned with nutritious and useful plants; and as the cultivations prospered, the population would increase also with it, providing industry, labour, and skill fully commensurate to the emergency. At this present, we may reckon, that for all the Konkun, British and Foreign, there is about £560,571 collected under every item*, a sorry amount, after all, for 13,265 square miles, which is equal to one-fifteenth of France, or rather less than one-ninth of England: and it is to be remembered, that this leaves the cultivator destitute of every thing but a precarious subsistence; so extremely precarious, that the least drought, irregularity of seasons, or calamity of whatever sort, such as the late murrain among the cattle, and the ravages of the spasmodic cholera, compels the Government to make enormous remissions, which though they would be severely felt by many, would be comparatively unimportant in a different state of things.

It may perhaps be thought that this is altogether speculative: has this indeed ever been the condition of the cultivator? Some will say also: has this actually been the original rule of taxation? It may be safely affirmed that it has, and that it is capable of the fullest proof both from what we now find subsisting, and what we can glean from the accounts of periods more and yet more remote. There are still a great variety of indirect attestations to the existence of a very different rule of management, which are best to be investigated and discussed by reference to History, and the analogous circumstances of other nations throughout Asia.

* The average revenue of the whole Konkun, north and south for 13 years including sayer, land revenue, land and sea customs (British) was Rs. 35,67,922. Bowra chief's rental, Rs. 33,276. Goa, Rs. 10,25,619. Duman, Rs. 2,79,477. Bombay land rental, 70,437. Angria's, 1,29,770. Hubshee's, 1,12,447. Warree chief, 3,66,760. Jowar chief, 12,000. The Veshalguri and Ssucheen's about Rs. 8000. Total Rs. 56,05,708, commuted at the rate of Rs. 10 to the pound ≒ £560,571, or about Rs. 423 per square mile.

9

It cannot be doubted, that the judicious administration of the revenues is a sacred but most difficult trust, while it cannot be deemed unimportant to provide for the necessities of the state, with the least measure of distress or uncertainty to the cultivator; but with the British Government it may be thought a far more obligatory duty, to give such an impulse to the moral feeling of the natives, through any, whatever medium, as may co-operate with freedom and education, to correct, encourage, and enrich the people, to bring them out of that gross and abject state of superstition, that wretchedness and ignorance, to which they have so long been subjected: to teach them from its own enlightened principles, the value of their individual powers and worth as men, tried indeed in this, but fitted for an immortal existence. The seeds of disease are often sown in the human frame in a secret and mysterious way, which baffles the physician's skill, but he diligently inquires for some clue to the origin of the malady, and is contented to argue and infer from that which he knows, and thus to provide, from analogous cases, a suitable remedy. In the body politic the same course will ensure success, in proportion as we search and examine into the best information we can collect, and proceed to the removal of abuses or evils, as they have been found to act destructively, or insidiously. The instruments by whom they were introduced, or the objects for which they were contemplated, instruct us how, and where, and with what precautions, to begin these measures: their effects warn us against all the consequences of particular and partial views, and at every step error is precluded, by weighing the present advantage against the advantages of past experience.

All our countrymen are grieved and astonished, nay even those who themselves have no distinct apprehensions of right or wrong, at the demoralization of the native character: there are not wanting among them many, who would delight to contribute by any possible means to their amelioration. Some consider education, some encouragement and wealth, some a rigid tutelage, the only methods by which to work a permanent and thorough reform; but there have been very few probably, scarcely one, who has considered the present subject, so unconnected does it appear in its very title, with reference to the grand question of moral improvement. The greater part of those very dry and unprofitable topics which exercise the patience of the collectors, may be well dispensed with for this so far more weighty matter, and although the remarks are here

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limited to a very small portion of India, there may be some useful
suggestions which will apply to our territories generally.

In entering upon the consideration of this question, it is necessary
to begin with the first proprietary right in the soil, from whence
the revenues of the state are drawn, and the subject derives his
maintenance,—moreover, for what purposes, and to what extent it is
allowable or practicable for the state to appropriate any portion of
the proceeds of the soil, dependent as that is on the labour and
capital of the husbandman, consistently with its immediate or per-
manent benefit, in which are included all those legal enactments,
all those civil institutions, lastly, all those fiscal regulations, which
bind, control, or fetter the cultivator. Besides, there are a multitude
of indirect occasions of loss and distress, both to the subject, the
soil he cultivates, and the revenues which the state receives: the
chief of which are, the abstraction of capital; undue methods of
realizing the Government share, either by the irrational and ob-
noxious practices of its receipt in kind, or uncertainty and inequality
in the rate of its commutation; the continuance of vexatious items
requiring the personal scrutiny of revenue officers, or the exaction
of compulsory service in any shape. Finally, insecurity of tenure
or usufruct, or a want of precision in its definition; in the former
are to be reckoned, legal insecurity, the insecurity of artificial or
natural helps, or the insecurity of property from the want of a
vigilant police, an equal, prompt, and certain administration of justice,
or a neglect of the military protection requisite in times of civil
commotion, or foreign war. These undoubtedly are the most
striking defects in the management of the revenue, and would
require a whole life to investigate and explain properly. In such a
complication of inquiries we are to discover the first step to moral
improvement; without it we shall grope on in the dark, and be
deceived into a belief that every plan of education is essentially
defective, when in reality it is the men we have to deal with, who
are unprepared for its reception. The body politic has to be reduced
to a fit state to receive those moral impressions, to profit and pro-
gress as it should, before any hope can be entertained of the least
success. The first and most intricate of these questions, is the true
proprietary right in the soil: to whom does it belong? We should
put this query; not, to whom does it now, and did it always, natural-
ly, but *actually* belong?

There are few subjects which have been more warmly and per-
tinaciously discussed by the British authorities in India, than the

11

nature of the landed property or tenures on which the soil is now
held by the landlord and agriculturist: yet how unsuccessfully and
unsatisfactorily to the parties chiefly concerned, may be perfectly
well understood from the voluminous reports and correspondence of
the most efficient servants of Government, and the frequent but
unavailing appeals of the different classes of the native landholders
themselves, against the proceedings and awards of the judicial
Courts. There are, it may be admitted, three most fruitful sources
to which we should properly refer all, or at least the far greater
number of controversial difficulties: Party feeling, engendered by
interests and prejudices of a private or public nature; the imperfec-
tion of human knowledge; lastly, the misapplication, or abuse of
words of equivocal signification. It may be considered a bold
assertion, although the circumstance be substantially correct, that
one and all these occasions of error have contributed to embarrass the
very ablest of those disquisitions on this abstruse topic which are
distinguished by close and argumentative reasoning. When first
agitated, the disputants were divided as to the best mode of treating
the subject or coming at its real merits, some arguing from first prin-
ciples, others drawing their conclusions from existing practices: in
short, the one raised a purely theoretical fabric; the latter built upon
one or more facts, with a greater or less show of solidity, as these
embraced a wider or more confined range. It should be observed
that the first principles assumed by the one party, were open to
animadversion, inasmuch as they depended upon the written law and
usage of the Hindus, delivered down to the present generation
through many successive ages, without adverting to the very doubt-
ful question of their having had the precedence of every other in
point of time, or indeed the further presumption that they were in
every sense essentially distinct both in their nature, origin, and
excellency, from the laws and usages of all other nations. The
grounds for the opinions of the opposite party, were still more
illusory and indefensible, being restricted to the local practices of
particular tracts, grafted occasionally on the fanciful construction of
feodal institutions, or the Hindu laws and traditions; with all the
uncertainty attendant on their practical effect, as well as the more
limited conversance of competent judges with the spirit and objects
of their first institution.

If it can be satisfactorily proved that the subsisting practices of the
whole of India have undergone modifications, till they have arrived
at their present state, not only in more recent periods of time, but as

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12

far back as authentic information can vouch for such change; if it
can be shown that the laws and institutions which are considered
to have the strictest obligations of religion, or the sanction of a
remote antiquity, have no further title to attention than the word
of the priesthood who allege such pleas for the especial advantage
of their own order; should it appear that these laws and institutions
are embodied only with local customs, where the particular influence
or ascendancy of some ruler devoted to that order has caused them
to be adopted: every argument founded on this construction of the
ancient usages of a country, by a code of laws of so partial a nature,
must immediately fall to the ground. But this is but a very small
portion of the difficulties into which many of the controversialists
on the land tenures of India have been inveigled: we have the
concurrent testimony of the most learned and intelligent Hindus,
that their forefathers are certainly not the first occupants of the
soil, that they emigrated hither, some earlier, some later than the
beginning of the Christian era; and beyond all this, we have plain
unanswerable chronological proofs, that their sacred books, to which
they assign an incredible antiquity, were for the most part written
subsequently to the seventh century after Christ. The examina-
tion of these proofs is the province of a distinct and intricate in-
quiry, but of which I speak with more confidence, having pursued
it through all the maze of fiction, falsehood, and confusion, with
which the subject has been obscured, especially by the abuse of
words. The exact date of that written law is therefore no longer
a matter of doubt, whatever may be said of the actual time when the
mass of those aspiring adventurers who procured its promulgation,
first obtained a permanent footing in the places where their descen-
dants are now located; the industry and keen observation of
Europeans will probably, ere another twenty years have elapsed,
have got together sufficient materials from ancient monuments to
decide this question also, and furnish out as much of the history of
the former sovereigns of India before the Mahomedan invasion, as
might have been gleaned from the revolting annals of successive
dynasties with the regular quantum of state murders, indiscriminate
bloodshed, and lawless ambition. How little the actions of those
ephemeral beings deserve a place in the page of history, may be
imagined from the thick darkness with which their memory is
deservedly enshrined.

Like the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel and Judah, all that
could be learnt, were we thoroughly informed of the names and

13

actions of each individual, would be the order of their succession,
that they worked wickedness, and sold themselves to do evil, and
that they slept with their fathers. Beyond the scanty memorials to
be found in ancient inscriptions, we can neither hope nor anticipate
much instruction from the annals of Indian history. They serve indeed
as useful landmarks or beacons, when properly authenticated, but
are likely to prove, in an equal degree, a decoy to those who are
impatient of the truth, or biassed in favor of any system. Can it be
believed for example, that the bards and chroniclers have not im-
posed upon the annalist of Rajpootana, and have we not seen the
first oriental scholar in this or any age, duped by the wily brahmin ?
We cannot rely on any information but that which is independent
of such incentives to deceit, and must take up the whole subject, the
history, the chronology, the genius, with the existing condition and
practical institutions of the people, as one entire system, to be viewed
and studied in the aggregate, before we can form one correct opinion.
In this temper we shall immediately discover a perfect refutation of
all those pretensions to antiquity which constitute the groundwork
of this imposing but purely visionary fabric of laws and religious
institutes, paralleled indeed by no other, because in their true accep-
tation, they never were acted up to. Turning aside from such
delusive dreams to sober realities, the very introduction, may the
composition of these laws are seen to be but of yesterday, and
altogether belie in the alterations they undergo, the absurdity of
that eternal fixity, which has been ascribed to them in the assevera-
tion of the priesthood*. In agriculture, in science, in literature, in
idolatry, and superstition, in all that interests or concerns the lowest
or the highest offices, the most frivolous or the most essential
pursuits of life, we see in a thousand instances, that the Hindu is as
ready to imitate his fellow-men as others, but his national vanity
and opinionativeness will not allow him to yield the precedence to
those who know more and better than himself: or it may be, that
slavish fear, the lurking suspicion of his heart, apprehends the dis-
possession and annihilation of his priestly gains, should the multitude
pry into, or perceive his deficiencies: hence he surreptitiously
appropriates and pawns on his countrymen, a scheme embellished
with all the outward plausibilities of age and sanctity, and squares
every modern institution as much as he can by this sole rule.

* And we might add with shame, of many of the most distinguished of our diplo-
matists and scholars, whose long residence in India, and acquaintance with the
actual state of things might have guaranteed an earlier exposal of its fallacy.

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Hence he wins the credulous of every class to place implicit confidence in his statements, and has found his tales so especially palatable to the unbounded credulity of our own countrymen, that he has seized every opportunity to obtain their full and final admission to universal observance, through this forlorn hope. He knows and trembles at the growing knowledge, that there was a time when the Hindu did not yield obedience to that written law, which now obtains a pre-eminency in all questions of ancient right, and when those who drew it up, or proposed it as the rule, had no claim or interest in the matter: it is impossible therefore to form a correct opinion of such ancient laws and usages, or of the modern which we have to do with, without first determining what was, is, and must be, the tendency, design, and character, of a system of jurisprudence, introduced, as that under consideration, in the most trivial as well as the most important concerns of domestic or public life: a jurisprudence now mixed up in some shape, with every transaction between the sovereign, the priesthood, and the people.

It may be worth while to ascertain in the first place what estimate was formed of the antiquity of the Hindu shasturs or books, whether of a religious or civil character, by Sir William Jones, to whom, and Mr. Hastings, we must acknowledge ourselves indebted for the far greater part of those opinions re-echoed without mature reflection, of the inviolable attachment of the rulers and people of India, to the rules therein propounded. In the preface to his translation of the ordinances of Munoo, he is at much pains to establish the age of Parasara by the precession of the fixed stars, and because a Parasara, or perhaps, this very same Parasara, was the grandson of Vasishta " who is often mentioned in the laws of Munoo, and once as a cotemporary with the Divine Bhrigu himself," he deduces the probability, that they were considerably older than those of Solon and Lycurgus. He next proceeds to an examination of the comparative styles of the Hindu books in the order of their composition, with those of the Romans by Numa, Appius, and Cicero, or Lucretius; whence he argues that the vedas are to be considered the productions of the sixteenth, and this law tract, (the Manava Dhorum Shastur) of the thirteenth century before Christ. The obvious intent of the preface, and of these observations in particular, was to show the equity and necessity of leaving the natives of the British possessions in India, perfectly free to follow their own laws and customs, which for the reasons above assigned, were supposed to have been promulgated at a remote period coeval it might be, with

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the first monarchies established in Egypt and Asia, and written as inferred from the incidental notice of a name in another work, in connection with the position of the colures, and rate of precession of the fixed stars, together with arguments drawn from certain equally indeterminate and singular data, to about twelve hundred and eighty years before Christ. It is not likely that Sir William Jones would have laid any stress on the age that this code was composed, or written, had it not conveyed to his mind a stronger claim on the assent of his countrymen, by that greatest of all claims, the prescriptive right of custom. "Custom," observes Bishop Horsley, "is the principal magistrate of man's life." But here it may be asked, Are these written laws the customary laws?—do they now, or have they ever constituted the mutual rule of conduct between prince and people? If not, it must be admitted that they militate against the specific object for which they are held up to approval. They are vicious and unsuitable, in proportion as they have not this prescriptive sanction on the one hand, the venerable recommendations of antiquity, or the only solid and rational claims of wisdom, truth, and comprehensibility on the other. The whole drift of the introductory remarks is to satisfy the world that the brahminical written law is, and always was, the law of India; that if any practice is not conformable to such law, it ought to be, and should be made so by the British Government: than which, nothing could be more fatal to the present and future happiness of this great empire. The people in general neither affirm nor believe that such law was immemorially followed, nor can we go any length in our compliances with its principles, without the rejection of those correcter principles on which all law is founded, if by the Divine Being, on principles of equity, equality, and reason; if by mere human skill, but too often on principles of injustice, partiality and ignorance.

Of law, as of religion, strictly speaking, there can be but one plain and true definition—that it be consistent, complete and adapted to its purpose: whatever is short of such excellencies, whether it be inconsistency, incompleteness, or inefficiency, abrogates in any scheme of religious belief, or dispensation of justice, every title to respect or inviolability; for if any point can for good and sufficient reasons be contested or oppugned, in regard of either of these requisites, the objection applies universally. And on such grounds, barring the assumed acceptableness and antiquity of the brahminical doctrines, the Hindu Jurisprudence is open to general reprobation: to use Sir William Jones's own words, "it is a system of despotism and

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priestcraft, both indeed limited by law, but artfully conspiring to give mutual support though with mutual checks." And this code conspiring to support despotism and priestcraft, is proposed as our rule in determining in matters of inheritance and contracts, between man and man, checked only by such provisions as the pundits or brahmins may think fit to bring to the remembrance of the judge. The persons who framed these laws had these objects particularly in view in all their provisions, and the restraints on their infringement: wherefore, the removal or modification of either, not only precludes that efficiency, but annuls that necessity, which was the express intent of the lawgiver. The British legislature interferes, and with great discretion and justice, in the continuance of a variety of absurd and sanguinary rules, that form an essential feature in the Hindu penal statutes; and though the whole of their institutions and written opinions of the rights of their fellow-creatures, present a confused jumble of criminal and civil, domestic and moral law, it is believed that the extraction of those portions which relate to successions and contracts, to property in chattels and property in the soil, will be best understood by reference to so indefeasible and authoritative counsellors.

A diligent examination of the landholders themselves would shew the folly of this supposition; as an impartial review of the Hindu writings and the spirit of the brahminical tenets would also disprove the general acceptance or compatibility of the written law to the circumstances of the people. If we desire to ascertain what the brahmins intended, we may immediately satisfy ourselves from their books. But if we wish to acquire an exact insight into the customary and acknowledged usages of the people, that immemorial custom in fact, which it is politic and humane, so far as is consistent with equity and fitness, to continue to them undisturbed; we must go to a far more venerable and abstruse record, the history of the present and past condition of India, the contrasted review of the Hindu and other Asiatic nations, as they stand affected to the age, progress, and circumstances of the human race: we must learn the state of existing usages, their tendency and efficacy from the fruits of certain experience, and admit the written law to have no greater influence or validity in deciding any question of this universal concern, than it is really worth; emanating as it is known to do, from a suspicious quarter, with sinister purposes.

In the general outline which I have drawn up of the ancient History of the provinces, South of the Nurbhudda, we have the most

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rational clue to the various tenures which have subsisted from the earliest times. We could never expect to explain the true character, objects, and origin of present institutions, by referring exclusively to that code of laws to which the Brahmins appeal as the sole arbiter or guide of the first occupants of the soil; forasmuch as the Brahmins themselves admit that they are descendants of a foreign race, and would not, even so far as these came under the operation of their particular policy, be disposed to incorporate, or allow in their books, any practice which did not consist with the stability of such interests and connections. We must search therefore for the traditionary system which prevailed before the existence of the Brahmins, or followers of Vishnoo, as a political body, and although it must be confessed the destructive and unrelenting hand of time has left us but few guides to consult, or direct us, these are better than those which obtrude themselves on our attention with all the effrontery of a corrupt and designing superstition. The followers of Boodh, who exercised the supreme authority in the days of Alexander the great, appear to have continued in undisturbed possession of India for many ages, always more or less tributary to the neighbouring kingdoms of Bactria, and Persia, as the reigning monarchs were enabled to enforce obedience. The nearer and more frequent intercourse with these countries, will explain the identity of the pure Persian and the Sunskrit language, as well as that remarkable intermixture of the Sabian worship with the contemplative reveries of Boodhism, which then prevailed throughout Asia in all its pristine simplicity.

At whatever period the present Hindu races may have entered India, which could not have preceded the irruption of the Mahomedan armies by many centuries, the general consent of native tradition, ancient record, and indirect testimony, warrants the belief, that the Boodhists were succeeded by the Brahmins, Rajpoots, and other adventurers in the 5th or 6th century of the Christian era: thereupon, the latter framed such institutions, as were calculated to preserve their own authority and possessions inviolate, and to secure as far as its framers could foresee, a regular and uninterrupted descent of all proprietary rights to their descendants, in equal shares from generation to generation.

The method which every nation, whether placed by general consent at the head of such a people, or arrived at this power by consent, must necessarily resort to, would be the observance of such

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existing institutions and rules, as either favored or did not clash with their own objects, on which they grafted such others as contrived to their having full and lasting effect. Such policy must necessarily be observed as an indispensable predicament at all times, and the argument is strikingly illustrated by the course pursued by our Norman forefathers, who blended the Norman with the Saxon laws and ordinances, leaving the great mass of the latter as the law of the land; annexing to them such only, as were confirmatory of their own interests and safety, as conquerors: and in fact, we know of no conquests in any part of the world, that were ever attended with a different course of procedure, save the Jewish, which being the great model and masterpiece of those confederations which unite individuals, families, and nations, could not but supplant the vicious and weak institutions which went before them. There the Jews were not suffered to admit of any remnants of the laws they might then find in force, which demonstrates that religion, or those superstitions which usurp its excellent title, form an integral and essential part of all law, and can never be separated from it: the abrogation or corruption of the one, must in an equal degree affect the other, nor can we fully and rightly apprehend that one, without a thorough acquaintance also with the others. In the instance we have before us, the Brahminical priesthood brought in a system which, like all schemes of idolatry, not averse to any other doctrines or practices, by which its own foundation was not endangered, received an accession of strength, if we might venture the expression, by amalgamation with another, having much the same designs; the maintenance of a crafty, indolent, and avaricious priesthood; the continuance of the same degraded ignorance, abject submission, and fixedness of condition, of the lower classes; with such returns from the soil and their labour, as should just maintain the latter from day to day, reserving only the power of exacting every thing over and above this for themselves. The fact that this country has been always more or less overcome by foreign armies, and its inhabitants enslaved, not only by superstition, but a foreign yoke, shows the influence of a bad Government; for of the ingredients of its population, it is now even more difficult to pronounce with any degree of certainty, than of the French, or British, or any European kingdom; Copts, Abyssinians, Persians, Georgians, Toorks, Arabians, and Tatars, have all become incorporated in some one or other of its various classes, and of the Hindus, not a few still present a striking resemblance in form and feature to their first originals.

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The groundwork therefore of the land tenure and proprietary rights in the soil, is undeniably most ancient; on this was reared the fabric we now have, with all its modifications introduced by Brahmins, Jyns, and Mahomedans; the spirit and bearing of these on the first principles is to be understood by the effects they have produced; from these we may learn what may hereafter be anticipated in the way of amelioration, from those measures already put in action by ourselves, far more satisfactorily, than by a discussion restricted to existing practices.

That the Egyptians and Chaldeans frequented India in the first ages after the flood is probable, from the agreement of the symbols of their worship, and the curious remains of many buildings and temples which abound with figures quite distinct from those of the modern Hindus: the sculpture of the features, form, and dress, though closely resembling the Egyptian and Abyssinian, may be held as corroborative evidences. Whether people of that nation gained ascendency by their superior skill, and versatility of talent, or formed alliances, we must now be content to remain in ignorance; but the dominion of a few powerful and ambitious legislators might well account for the introduction of those obscene and cruel rites which distinguish the superstitions of both. Whatever good such persons could impart, would be limited exclusively by selfish views, the institutions of Egypt would, so far as they affected the land, be commensulated therefore to this extent likewise.

By such arguments we might consider the proprietary right of the soil vested in the first great proprietor, or landlord, by whom, as the dispenser of honor and wealth, the same was delegated to others; but it is impossible abstractedly to conceive of any proprietary right, but that which eventually resolves into the sovereign's. The most authentic and ancient documents, inscriptions on copper-plates, and buildings, brought to light under circumstances altogether devoid of any liability to fraud, or deception, prove this proprietary sovereign right, when society had made considerable advances to a settlement from the pastoral to the agricultural state. These therefore mutually concur to the same point. Mr. Wilks, however, in his history of the south of India, appears to have completely misunderstood the scriptural account of the Egyptian and Israelitish institutions; which he has adduced cursorily as a testimony to the contrary opinion. Beginning with the Jewish government which at first was a pure theocracy, in every sense of the word, for they had no king but God; the priests's inheritance was perfectly distinct

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from that of their brethren*: they had the tenth, or tythe, in all Israel, but no inheritance whatever in *their* lands; both one, and the other, the Levites, and their brethren of the remaining tribes, receiving and occupying of this their only king. These all sold and disposed of their lands, and those that bought, or received them in mortgage, were bound to restore them to their first proprietors, after a specific term, yet the right of transfer and possession was affirmed and admitted as held originally from the first sovereign donor.

The contribution for the state, or revenue we know has, and must always have been, essentially distinct, whether in service, or in money, or in corn; for the Levites were not reckoned with the rest of Israel, and were exempted from all concern in war; that portion of the general inheritance of Israel which was required for the state included no exactions from that which was already given away, nor would it have anticipated any diminution of such funds originally without inconsistency. What was once pronounced holy, *aytos*, separated; KHODESH, Heb. reserved, or specially appropriated; was the Lord's, and accordingly assigned to his ministers†: this was the nature and consequence of a theocracy. Under this form of Government, and this head, there could be no stated expenditure of the fixed nature of revenue, but what related expressly to the Lord's ministers and temple; but when the people asked for a king the

* Deuteronomy xviii. 1, 2; Numbers xviii. 20, 21; Leviticus xxv. 23, 24; It should be carefully noted that the law of Moses required 48 cities with their suburbs (a square of 2000 cubits or 4,000,000 square cubits 400 *arouræ*) to be given to the Levites, Numbers xxxv. 1, 8. These suburbs were distinct from the lands of the Israelites, "the fields of the suburbs of their cities may not be sold, for it is their perpetual possession." Leviticus xxv. 34. "The houses of the villages which have no wall round about them shall be counted as the fields of the country: they may be redeemed and they shall go out in the Jubilee.—Notwithstanding the cities of the Levites and the houses of the cities of their possession, may the Levites redeem at any time." Leviticus xxv. 31, 32.—See also Leviticus xxvii 28; Ezekiel xi. 4.

† Leviticus xxvii. 30; 1 Samuel viii. 7.

"The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me. And in all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land," Lev. xxv. 23, 24. So also Hooker observes of the institutes of Charlemagne: "Neither did God only thus ordain amongst the Jews: but the very purpose, intent, and meaning, of all that have honoured him with their substance, to invest him with the property of those benefits, the use whereof must needs be committed to the hand of men, in which respect the style of ancient grants and charters is,—We have given unto God both for us and for our heirs, as ye well know," says Charlemagne, "that the goods of the church are the sacred endowments of God,"—Hooker, lib. 5. p. 459.

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whole constitution was remodelled. They had then rejected their proper sovereign, and required one like those of the nations around them, the manner of whose government is told us a little further on. "He will take your fields and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, "even the best of them, and give them to his servants, and he will "take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his "officers, and to his servants, and he will take your men-servants and "your maid-servants and your goodliest young men, and your asses, "and put them to his work." He will take the tenth of your sheep, and ye shall be his servants. This was the exact similitude of a king to judge them, to go out before them, and to fight their battles, —he was to take a tenth of all, for his own, and his household's use, not interfering with the tenth which was the Levites,' as the ministers and stewards of divine worship. In all therefore the people were charged with one-fifth of the produce of the lands, that is, as much more as they had been accustomed to pay. The event proved the truth of this forewarning counsel. Saul, and David, and Solomon, took what they required, and over the king's treasures was one, over the storehouses in the fields, in the cities, in the villages and the castles was another*; but all these officers were the keepers of the king's especial substance: the superintendant of the tribute, noticed by Colonel Wilks, (vol. 1, ch. 1,) was not an officer to collect revenue from the Israelites, but a person appointed over the Moabites, Syrians, and Canaanitish tribes, tributary to the Jewish kings. The first notorious act of violence was that of Ahab in possessing himself of the vineyard of Naboth. The land had been assigned to the forefathers of this man, and by the laws of the land was his property, but the king ejected him, as a king, not of necessity or descent possessed of the first sovereign's power and rights, but armed with despotism, like that of the surrounding monarchs. In him, therefore, the ejection was a grievous display of arbitrary power, for which as he could find no sanction even in his own heart, he superadded murder, seeing that so long as the proper owner existed, his title to the vineyard would be invalid. This is a true picture of despotic power, and in taking the heathen nations as their guide, the step from a monarchical to a despotic government was inevitably sudden

* 1 Chronicles xxvii. 25–31; Joshua xvi. 10; xvii. 13; Judges i. 28–33; also under David, 2 Samuel viii. 2, 6; lastly under Solomon's reign, 1 Kings ix. 21, 22, 33; 2 Chronicles viii. 9; and towards the close of Solomon's reign, 1 Kings v. 13, 14; ix. 15; xi. 27.

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for that was the prevailing government of the heathen, the *Goyim* of Scripture, at the period of this great political change.

Next to the Jewish, we may consider the Egyptian. The Patriarch Joseph, we are told, took up (cultivated on the king's account) one-fifth of the land of Egypt, and brought together all the superabundant corn of those seven years, which he housed till the expiration of that term, but when the years of scarcity came, and the improvidence of the people placed them entirely at the disposal of their prince, the gratitude, the wisdom, and the integrity of the minister, were as conspicuously exemplified, as his consideration, humanity, and justice. He had indeed other commissions to execute, to save his father and brethren alive, that family in whose posterity all the families of the earth were to be blessed; but he required of the people that they should bring, thenceforth, one-fifth of all their produce into the king's store-houses, the priests, or princes as it may be translated, being alone exempted; "for the priests had a portion assigned to them of Pharaoh," and this was the exact state of the Jews under their kings. To understand the equitableness of this contribution, one fifth of the produce, it must be remembered that the monarchs of Egypt had no such law before that, nor did it subsist at a much later period, when Diodorus Siculas wrote of that country; he tells us the ancient practice was to mete out the lands into three shares, one to the sovereign, one to the priests, and one to the soldiery: but this provided one fifth of the whole for the former two estates, and four-fifths for the people for seed and for food. Joseph required upon the king's account, in accordance with the despotic usages of the nation, the fifth of the lands of Egypt, (literally, he made five parts;) and besides this, he bought all that was not required by the people, in the seven years of plenty, which he placed in safe and convenient situations, as it might be subsequently required. At the termination of the seven plenteous years he distributed and sold out this corn, first for the money, then for the cattle, then for the lands of the people, which he restored to them altogether, under a new and wise obligation that they should pay, as of right, two-tenths, that is one-fifth of all their produce, for ever, to the King, his master:—that is, one-tenth for the state expenses, one-tenth for the priests, as holding of their Sovereign the chief of that body, and in whom also the chief magistracy and political authority was vested. This institution was the very same which was introduced under the kingly government of the Israelites; it is that which has served also as the model or rule before and since, in all monarchies and governments, and in fact, which obtained

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anciently in all Asia, whether in Persia, in China, or in India. There is equal reason to believe that the Romans adopted the same rate of contributions for the state as the land was called decumanus, and the tenths or tythes, decumani, all such tythable lands were distributed amongst the citizens; the same was likewise followed in all the Roman colonies, and it is thought that this extreme lenity of the conquerors towards the people they had subjected, contributed most materially to the extension of the empire, because their native princes generally required a much larger amount of revenue.

Traces of this are still to be discovered in all the mountainous and inaccessible parts of Asiatic countries in India, such are still to be found on all the coast of Malabar, on the western frontiers of Berar, Orissa, on the north-eastern frontiers of Karnata, and in the eastern districts of Goojrat. In every country we may observe the progressive changes introduced by the Mahomedans and Brahmins, and even in the legendary and mythological tales of the latter, there are positive proofs that this rule was general all over India. The Muhabharat, an epic poem highly esteemed by the Hindus, and considered of great antiquity, expressly states, that the prince is entitled to one-tenth of the grain produce, and a fiftieth of the produce of mines. The institutes of Munoo, translated by Sir William Jones, are not materially different in the amount of the tax, but savour of that ambiguity which was always a prominent characteristic of the Brahminical writings, "of cattle, of gems, of gold and silver, a fiftieth part may be taken by the king; of grain an eighth part, a sixth, or a twelfth." Here was the first inlet to the present system of undue exaction, which furnished the Mahomedans and Mahrattas with a pretext for increasing the demands of government. In the commentary of Culluca Bhut printed with the text in Italics, a reason is assigned for the variable tax, which is just such an account as a revenue officer would give, "according to the difference of the soil and the labour necessary to cultivate it." There is much greater reason to ascribe it to the difference of the tenant's rights to the usufruct, because the original possessor had certainly a greater interest and claim in the produce, than one holding the land by sufferance, or on mortgage: for it appears that the Hindu law required of those who held land on such terms, to pay one-eighth to the proprietor, and one-eighth to the king,—in all one-fourth; but when lands were held which belonged to those who had thrown them up, or fled the country, one-sixth was paid to the king, less indeed than lands mortgaged were assessed at, but more than lands paid, which were held by the first proprietors of the soil.

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It is not to be supposed that the Greeks could have known much of the ancient institutions of India from the companions of Alexander, but the power of the king to levy one-fourth of the gross produce in seasons of unusual distress, was probably even then in force; but it is not asserted either by Diodorus or Strabo, that this high rate of exaction was the established custom of India. Whether it were really the case, it was declared to be lawful in the institutes of Munoo; and Mr. Grant, in his account of the revenues of Bengal, informs us that this was the maximum of taxation when the Mahomedans first invaded India. This also was the sum paid by those who cultivated the lands of others, one-eighth to the proprietor, one-eighth to the king; that is, a proportion of the produce.

In the Ayeen Akberry we may discover the first changes introduced by the Mahomedans. " In former times," says Abool Fuzul, "the monarchs of Hindoosthan exacted the sixth of the produce of the lands; in the Turkish Empire, the husbandman paid the fifth; in Turan the sixth; and in Iran the tenth." Again, "Latterly in Iran and Turan, government has taken a tenth of the produce of the soil; but at the same time the husbandman is loaded with a number of other taxes, which altogether exceed half the produce*. These last are the imposts and collections previously noticed called "Syerzukat." Previous to the reign of Akbar, there had been no alterations in the Brahminical system of finance, but his attention being called to the exactions of the revenue officers, he appointed several intelligent persons to investigate the ancient and present usages of the countries, and assessed the lands at one-third of their gross produce, that is two-sixths.

How a monarch so just in all his dealings, whose memory is still so much revered by all classes of people, should have doubled the ancient assessment, can only be explained by reverting to the principle of division which we have described as subsisting anciently in Egypt. The provision for the priests, and the service and objects of religion, was levied with the state levy, and was exactly equivalent to it. In the ancient government of Anagoondee, the capital of Karnata, the whole produce was estimated and apportioned in four parts, three-fourths to the proprietors and cultivators; one-fourth to the state and priesthood; at first one-eighth of the gross produce to each of the two latter: but there was little pretence for the due payment of the share appropriated to religious uses; and Buchanan says, the state reckoned the government share

* Ayeen Akberry, vol. 1, pp. 278, 279.

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to be one-sixth. The prince therefore set an example to the other estate to levy as much: all which, or one-third of the gross produce collectively, was the amount of demands imposed by Akbar's minister Todur Mull, and considered a change greatly for the better, after the oppressive system of Sheer Khan, and their Hindu masters.

When the Hindu institutes left the amount to be levied, in uncertainty and doubt, it stood to reason there would be no plea untried to wring from the cultivators as much as could be got without absolute rebellion. None of the earlier Mahomedan sovereigns gave themselves any trouble about the exact and just settlement of the revenues; their minds were wholly bent on conquest, and the overthrow of idol worship; neither did they live sufficiently long to be enabled to perfect any measures for the stability of their newly-conquered possessions; but Akbar united a spirit of moderation, discernment and justice to the military decision and fearless ambition of his forefathers: and the character of such a monarch soon brought about his court all the ability that was requisite to the undertaking. The entire spirit of Akbar's regulations was in accordance with the Hindu system, with this sole difference, that the Mahomedan sovereigns took the management of the fund for religious and charitable uses into their own hands, and thus, the object of the tax having been lost sight of, it has been generally thought, that the assessment fixed by Todur Mull, was for the expences of the state alone. So long as there was no other religion to provide for, as in the earliest periods of Hindu history, or when the Brahmins disallowed the maintenance of all other but their own, the share set apart for the ministers of their worship or its service, did not require any more particular mention in their law books, than we find in the injunctions to give gifts, and lands, and cattle, and money to the priesthood:— to have restricted the amount of gifts and assignments in that system of laws, would have been adverse to their spirit and intention:—it was the design of all the Hindu legislators, to exalt, to aggrandize and enrich the Brahmins, but the case was quite altered when the Mahomedans had gained a permanent footing in India: the prince himself being of this persuasion, it was an act of toleration in Akbar, to dispense to the Hindu from the same fund as he did to the Mahomedan priesthood; and whether Todur Mull acted with the advice of Akbar, or from respect to his own connection with the Hindu religion, we may at once discover the origin of the amount to be levied. Abool Fuzul, in the Ayeen Akberry, enumerates a number of cruel and impolitic imposts fixed by former monarchs;

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all of which were abolished by the revenue managers of the upright prince, his master.

What the amount levied by the Hindu princes was, we have already seen; it is probable that it included the two items usually levied in former times for the two separate estates, the Government and the priesthood—wherefore, if we consult the spirit and letter of the Hindu law books, it would appear that the sixth part, or eighth, or twelfth of the produce of the country, as above noticed, constituted the full amount levied on both accounts anterior to the written law. The Mhanava Dhurum Shaster describes the duty of a Hindu soveriegn with respect to conquered territories. " Having conquered a country, let him respect the deities adored in it, and their virtuous priests; let him also distribute largesses, and cause a full exemption from terror to be loudly proclaimed. When he has perfectly ascertained the conduct and intentions of all the vanquished, let him fix in all that country a prince of the royal race; and give him precise instructions. Let him establish the laws of the conquered nation as declared, and let him gratify the new prince with gifts. The seizure of desirable property, though it cause hatred, and the donation of it, though it cause love, may be laudable or blameable on such occasions." (Chapter 7, art. 201—204.) Here we have the letter and the spirit of Hindu legislation on this point,—and it suffices to prove, that so far as the established law of the conquered countries conformed to the Brahminical institutes, it was preserved; yet whenever it clashed against, or differed from it, the prince had the power of dispensing with its continuance. A deep study of the whole Hindu code, and a review of its spirit and objects, would concur therefore to shew the identity of the principle of the Jewish, Egyptian, Persian, and this Hindu rule of fixing the imposts to be levied.

Sir John Malcolm, than whom few persons have had so great opportunities of obtaining correct information on this subject, was struck with the great similarity of the Hindu to the Jewish code*;

* With the church of Christ, touching these matters, it standeth as it did with the whole world before Moses. Whereupon for many years men being desirous to honour God in the same manner as other virtuous and holy personsages before had done, both during the time of their life, and if further ability did serve, by such device as might cause their works of piety to remain always, it came by these means to pass that the church from time to time had treasure, proportionable unto the poorer or wealthier estate of Christian men; and as soon as the state of the Church could admit thereof, they easily condescended

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but of the latter he seems to have had no more knowledge than is to be gleaned from the innumerable treatises, copies of, or references to, some crude opinions of early Christian authors. And this also holds true likewise with regard to Colonel Wilks, and other writers, on the subject of the land tax of the ancients generally. Sir John Malcolm begins his report on the administration of the Revenues of Central India, by the consideration of the tenures of land, which he says differ in no essential degree from those in other parts of India. He considers, as most persons have done before and since, that the theoretical part of the question has received more attention than it merits; the actual usages less. It would be quite unnecessary to produce a single additional proof that our countrymen have entirely overlooked the effect of the spirit of a legislative code on the morals of the people. Few have thought with the wise and virtuous Sir Henry Strachey, that the morality of the Hindu is wrapt up in every part and article of their law and religion; it is so remote an effect from a cause so complex and hidden, that it is

to think it most natural and most fit, that God should receive, as before, of all men his ancient accustomed revenues of tithes. Thus therefore both God and nature have taught to convert things temporal to eternal uses, and to provide for the perpetuity of religion, even by that which is most transitory. For, to the end that, in worth and value there might be no abatement of any thing once assigned to such purposes, the law requireth precisely the best of what we possess; and to prevent all damages by way of commutation where instead of natural commodities or other rights, the price of them might be taken, the law of Moses determined their rates, and the payments to be always made by the shekel of the sanctuary, wherein there was great advantage of weight above the ordinary current shekel. The truest and surest way for God to have always his own is by making him payment in kind out of the very selfsame riches which through his gracious benediction the earth doth continually yield. This where it may be without inconvenience is for every man's conscience' sake. That which cometh from God to us, by the natural course of his providence, which we know to be innocent and pure, is perhaps best accepted because least spotted with the stain of unlawful or indirect procurement. Besides whereas prices daily change, Nature, which commonly is one, must needs be the most indifferent and permanent standard between God and man. But the main foundation of all whereupon the security of these things dependeth, as far as any thing may be ascertained amongst men, is that the title and right which man had in every of them before donation doth by the act, and from the time of any such donation, dedication, or grant, remain the proper possession of God till the world's end, unless himself renounce or relinquish it; for if equity have taught us that one ought to enjoy his own, that what is ours no other can alienate from us, but with our own deliberate consent; finally, that no man having passed his consent or deed, may change it to the prejudice of any other, should we presume to deal with God worse than God hath allowed any man to deal with us?—Hooker's Eccl. Polity, book 5, vol. 2, page 456, § 79.

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beyond the reach of very many to discover, and the time of others
who are competent to investigate its real usefulness, is taken up with
frivolous and tedious business which precludes a more perfect
understanding of it.

"In the theory even," says Sir John Malcolm, "of this subject,
we must recollect, that according to the Hindu sacred writers, the
soil first belonged to him by whom it was occupied and tilled; for
kings, we are informed by these authors, were instituted subsequent
to the cultivation of the soil, and the possession of property; and
we find it stated in their most revered texts, that at the commence-
ment of monarchy a due or tax of ten per cent. upon the land was
assigned to monarchs for their support." "There is a remarkable
coincidence," he further observes, "in the share of produce of land
allotted for the first Hindu rulers, and the tythes fixed for the minis-
ters of the Christian Church, which were borrowed from the Jewish
code." Mr. Wilks in his History of the south of India, has fallen
into the same mistake, confounding the Jewish tenths or tythes for
the priesthood, with the tenth for the state expenses or king. He
says, speaking of the Jewish, "I have not been able to trace with
any certainty, the nature and amount of the contributions which
were paid for the service of the state, unless we are to consider the
interests of the priesthood and of the sovereign, to be united, and a
portion of the tythes in peace, and of the slaves and cattle taken in
war, which was paid to the Levites, as intended to be applied to
the public expenses of the state. The tythe itself is of the exact
nature of the Indian contribution; and the inference that this or
some separate portion of the crop was payable in kind to the
sovereign, appears to be supported by the existence of a special
officer for superintending the tribute, and another for the store-
houses in the fields, in the cities, in the villages, and in the castles;
an enumeration which seems to show that a portion of the crop
was laid up for the sovereign in every field, village, and city." He
further observes of the Jewish tythes: "This supposition is streng-
thened by observing that Mahomed, who borrowed so much from the
Jewish institutions, levied a tenth, as head of the Church, but applied
a large portion of it to the services of the state; and it would
also seem, that this was the portion exacted from Judea after its
conquest by the Romans*." From this it would appear that nei-
ther of these distinguished officers consulted the original with any

* Wilks's South of India, vol. I, page 134, chapter 4th.

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great diligence, or they would have seen, that the king's revenues
levied after the manner of the kings of the nations, of which we
have already given an account, was quite a distinct tax from that
for the service of religion, and is shown to be so in all Mahomedan
countries, by Abool Fuzul in the Ayeen Akberry, the Asheree of
the Turkish Empire, and the tribute, or *κηρώσιμοι* of the Romans of
a denarius, being cesses on a conquered people*.

The sum of all which is briefly this, that the most ancient land tax
throughout the world, and which even now subsists in some countries,
was one-tenth of the produce, specially levied for the service of the
state, or king; besides this, there was another tenth or tythe levied
for the service and ministers of religion; collectively one-fifth, which
fifth was that very amount settled by Joseph in Egypt on a correct
measurement of all the lands in cultivation. When the Jews were
under a theocracy, they were subject only to one of these charges,
for the express use of the ministers and worship of their Divine
King and Lord, but when they resolved on having a king as the
nations around them, they were charged with a further tenth to
pay his servants, and thus they exhibit to us the portraiture of
those most ancient institutions, when all monarchies were formed
after one simple model. In the number of these was India; where
the prince levied a tenth for his own expenses, the ministers of
religion their tythe. When the Boodhist religion was put down
by the worshippers of Brahma, Vishnoo, and Sheeva, it was politic
and consistent in these professors of a more corrupt religion to
take the whole revenues into their own hands, that they might
bestow the portion for the ministers and service of religion on their
own priesthood, because their object was to exterminate those that
preceded or differed from them; hence they levied a sixth, perhaps
intentionally fixing a less proportion of the whole produce (than
two-tenths, or one fifth), because they might desire in some measure
to reconcile the people to their own plan. In this way, the land
became charged with the first, and the second or more moderate
tax, and in the latter state all those countries were found which
were overrun by, or subjected to the Brahmins, or their followers.
Still a few countries proving inaccessible, or their people an over-
match for the Hindus, retained the earlier and more simple
institutions. These countries are chiefly in the south of India, or in
the woody fastnesses of the Payeen Ghats; on the east of Goojrat,

* Matthew xxii. 17—19.—Mark xii. 14.

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the valley of the Nurbudda, Malabar, Koorg, Kanara, the Konkun,
Travankor and lastly Ceylon. When the British commissioners re-
ported on the Island of Ceylon in 1795, the tradition had always
been, that the sovereign's share was one-tenth of the produce, and
it was so then: it cannot be supposed that this small land tax was
chargeable with any other deductions for the maintenance of the
religious worship of the natives.

Having brought down the account of the land tax to the days
of Akbar, and the plans introduced by Todur Mull, I shall revert
to the main question at issue, concluding only with a few remarks,
regarding the period of a stationary tax, corresponding more or less
with the amount directed to be levied in the Hindu shasters. The
Mahomedans, as I have before noticed, were occupied in making
conquests and converts; they took what they could get, and as much
as they could wring from their opponents; but the emperor Akbar
found it more desirable to retain what had been already conquered,
to consolidate, to reconcile, and to remove every feeling of mistrust
or hatred from his new subjects; he was urged therefore by every
motive to make himself universally known as a resolute but humane
master, a king in every sense of the word, in the opinion of Hindu
and Mahomedan. He viewed the taxes in the light of emissaries,
to convey his intentions and character to the utmost verge of his
dominions, for he saw that oppression would bring all that fabric to
the ground, which had been raised by his forefathers; he saw and
felt, that every cultivator could appreciate the worth of a ruler who
dealt with all his subjects, of whatever faith or hue on the same
principle; he desired to gain their affections by removing all un-
certainty and all undue exactions, with which intent he fixed the
sovereign's share at one-sixth, the share for the ministers of religion
of his own or other creeds, at one-sixth more, in all, collectively,
one-third, precisely as his predecessors the Brahmins had done. This
amount of tax, one-third, was therefore an improvement on a state of
things when the amount to be levied was uncertain, and in the highest
degree ruinous and oppressive. From Akbar it was received through-
out the whole Indian Empire, as a pledge of his moderation, humanity
and justice. He went the whole length with the most bigoted of
his own faith, in reserving the distribution of the share of the
priesthood, that he might dispense it equally both to Mahomedan
and to Hindu, at the same time that he reconciled the population
the great mass of whom were Hindus, to a foreign yoke, and the
appropriation of a portion of their priesthood's rights to the service

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of a very different religion. To have done less would have proved
fatal to the Mahomedan dominion;—to have omitted it altogether,
would have been to permit every disorder to spring up both among
his own countrymen and the Hindus, and work by slow and hidden,
but certain methods, to the disorganization of all good government
and the confusion of all religious establishments.

It is as easy to conceive of a kingdom or state existing, when
divided against itself, as to imagine a component and essential
body of that kingdom or state to have any interest in which the
other does not participate: it would be as impossible to instance a
more certain indication of the connection and identity of the whole
political body, than this mutual interest in each other's rights: either
therefore the constitution of such state must be of one form and
character, or it must fall to the ground. A republic cannot subsist
with a monarchical government, though the excess of republicanism
may tend to monarchy, or the abuse of a monarchical government
to despotism, or the miseries of an absolute monarchy engender a
spirit of republicanism; but so long as the constitution of a state is
fixed in one or other of these forms, the whole of the estates which
compose it will partake of the like characteristics. We may put this
question therefore, What is, nay, has always been the prevailing cha-
racter of the Indian Governments? No one will hesitate in answer-
ing, an absolute or despotic monarchy: how then can such monarchy
be divided against itself and contain the seeds of innumerable small
republics: either they are no republics, and to be considered only as
temporary expedients provisory against the miseries of anarchy;
or if republics, the whole state could not long continue at a stand,
but would tend, and eventually become, altogether republican. For
this reason it is not to be believed that the village institutions, those
innumerable small federal republics, could have a distinct character
from the sovereign's, they are but provisions against confusion and
misrule, or rather subordinate arrangements of that great despotic
monarchy which originates, preserves, or countenances them.

Again, as we have seen that the kings in every condition of
government, whether a theocracy, a limited or an absolute monar-
chy, levied one-tenth of the produce of the land, we cannot con-
ceive that either the king or the people could participate without
a mutual interest in the same property, the king in the labour which
is bestowed by the people on the soil made over to them by him;
the people in the soil for the usufruct of which they pay by the
gains of their own industry. The soil therefore is the property of the

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king, and the tax levied whether in service, or money, or kind, for
its usufruct, his just and bounden due, which amount was fixed, time
immemorially, at one-tenth. That, which under all other govern-
ments but the theocratic was levied for the service of religion, was a
separate charge: under the Mosaic law, as well as under the pri-
mitive economy it was one-tenth, or the tythe of all possessions,
and this has been the model or practice of all nations, and is so
even with many to this very day. The negligence of the people,
far more frequently than the cunning or talent or ambition of a
few individuals, has compromised the first simple monarchical in-
stitutions and brought about a despotism on the one hand, or a
slavish submission to the nobles on the other, in which all the rights
of the weaker party have been violated and the mutual interests of
both sacrificed to the ruling power. The weaker naturally have
recourse to every expedient to redress their wrongs which they
can avail themselves of: that expedient is seen in India, in the
institution of those village communities which are said to have been
of most ancient origin, though there is no proof to this effect ante-
rior to the first arrival of the Mahomedans in India. On the con-
trary, what we learn from old inscriptions on copper-plates and
monuments, is calculated to disprove the existence of any such federal
republics in times past: they affirm the land to be the property of
the sovereign, the whole of the officers of the land to be his depen-
dants, and the cultivators, his tenants. Are we to conclude that the
sovereign's share was fixed without any forethought or justice, that
he took in virtue of his *mere* regal authority, a portion of the pro-
ceeds of that labour which undoubtedly was not his own, whatever
be thought of the land? Can it be believed that the cultivator
would have delivered up any portion of his gains, the produce earn-
ed with the labour of his hands and the sweat of his brow, when
he knew the whole appertained either to him as an individual mem-
ber of the township, or village community collectively, with his
fellows; that federal republic, which is styled a perfect imperium in
itself? The conclusion is absurd in the highest degree, that a
member of a republican form of Government should have submitted
and should have tamely surrendered his rights or the rights of that
estate to which he belonged; and yet that member, and all the
individual members collectively, have preserved the same republi-
can spirit unchanged: that they should have answered all the de-
mands of the state, whether authorized and admitted, or oppres-
sive and unjust, and yet have maintained an example of republi-

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canism that is altogether adverse to monarchy in any shape. When
the Israelites were under a theocracy they received their lands as
assignments by the command of their King and Lord, from a con-
quered country; they were assessed lightly, because there was no
need of kingly retinues and state expenses of any sort, but what
appertained to the ministers of the altar. When they chose to have a
king after the manner of the nations, the service of the temple was
not neglected, but the king required a separate maintenance for
himself and his court, and servants. The first that exercised this
office, and all that ruled after him, evinced, more and more, the folly
of their choice; for as the people became impoverished, they became
enslaved, and the result was a despotism, of which all Asia affords
melancholy attestations. The consequences of that despotism are
felt more deeply because the exaction rose, age after age, higher and
higher. At first it was a tenth, then a sixth, then a third, then a
half or more, in which predicament, we have found it, on the con-
clusion of the late war, on the western side of India.

The whole of this great empire illustrates the foregoing account. When India was under one monarch, there were lords of five towns, of twenty, of a hundred, and so forth; when the reins of Government were relaxed, when the social compact of its earliest institutions was weakened or dissolved, when the surrounding nations, the hardy Scythian, and the brave Tatar, had espied the flimsy texture of that network which bound all the discordant materials of this immense body together, they perceived that there was no regular principle of union, no common feeling of patriotism, no bond in short, but what is the offspring of vanity, fear, and superstition; they dissolved the charm by breaking up the confederations nearest them; the rest rushed together, each to the standard of some leader, whose cause they upheld by the spirit of a grovelling dependence, guided instinctively to such selection, by those natural barriers and restraints alone, which first define the utmost limits of an empire, a district, a hundred, or a village, and thus arose necessarily all the petty principalities and states throughout India, the ancient *Bharutu Vurvshu*. Thus arose the kingdoms of Maharashtra, Telingana, Kannata and Draveed on the ruins of the first great empire, after which, in the days of Humaiyoon and Akbar, and Shahjehan and Aurungzeeb, successively, sprang the innumerable poligars or rebel chiefs, whose cradle was insurrection, and whose first impulse and only nourishment was plunder. Bred up in the bosom of anarchy, they were favorable to the institution of those village communities,

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which are supposed to exemplify republics, and to attest the stability of Hindu civil society, when they are in reality the strongest, the last, and the most indubitable evidences, of the internal weakness of the ancient Hindu monarchies; they are proof, beyond all contradiction, that the monarch was the undoubted lord of the soil, and that the whole fabric of society was inaptly put together; that some provisional expedient was essentially necessary to obviate misrule and the annihilation of all order.

It may be thought unnecessary to adduce testimonies from the Hindu shasturs, that the land was the property of him who cleared and cultivated it, when in a code of justice it is inculcated as allowable in the sovereign to appropriate to himself any portion of the land or produce when required. If the former have any weight, the latter must also: and if the latter be contrary to all justice, and savour of despotism there can be very little room to argue the existence of any such existing right in the soil, in behalf of him who cleared and cultivated it. That was, and must have been long since, superceded; either then, it is held of the state, as the property of the king, or it is impossible the king can with any colour of justice take the smallest part of it, or its produce, in which he has no claim, whether of labour, or property. On such grounds we must adjudge the land to belong *actually to* the sovereign, legally or necessarily; as by his own acquisition is not the point, but by the nature of the consent which confers or admits his title to the superior title, power, and dignity. In him vested the administration of justice, the dispensation of mercy, and the direction of all that concerns the welfare and continuance and union of the whole body politic. He leads in war, he presides in peace, he declares the opinion of all classes, and in him therefore is vested the common property which he makes over at will, on requiring and receiving as his due, at each individual's hand, the tenth of the produce to meet the expenses of those duties over which he presides. What greater proof of this fact, than that the monarch, or his representatives in India, are bound by an understood agreement, not in any wise to molest or eject the cultivator so long as he pays his rent; that the cultivator, on the other hand also, is in like manner equally bound to pay the king's share of the produce without demur or dispute. The evils which are superinduced by despotism, are distinct from all such compact. This compact still subsists to the letter; whatever is demanded beyond it, is the effect of absolute rule; whatever is paid over and above the first stipulated amount, is yielded up from the enslaved

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cultivator, the more impoverished, the more oppressed; the more ignorant, the more enslaved.

Here then is the answer to the first question that the property in the soil was originally, and is still by construction, vested in the sovereign:—the people paying him for the usufruct, a portion of the produce, earned from it by their own personal exertions and capital. The tenure is discoverable in those leases at second-hand from him, who is the first lease-holder, to a third party; he receives of him a tenth of his produce, but the king looks to the first occupant for his revenue, not to the holder of the land at second or third hand, as is the case in large zumeendarees: hence the ryot is charged with this tenth, over and above the king's dues, if at second hand; or more, if he be a miserable underling in a large zumeendaree.

The foregoing determines also the full amount which the state can exact with propriety, for a continuance, uninterruptedly; and the ryot, or cultivator pay without difficulty, or injustice: for the public revenues must be measured by what the people are able to give for any continuance, as well as what they ought to give; and the experience of ages has determined such amount to be one-fifth, that is, one-tenth for the administration of the Supreme authority, one-tenth for the support of the religion, or religious persuasions, whatever they might be. It is impossible that this rule should have been departed from, without some visible effect, for if the supreme power by any undue exaction or infringement of the compact, were to wrest from the cultivator the fruit of his own labour, his industry must necessarily slacken, the motive to energy be annihilated, inaction must inevitably ensue, and the conclusion bring about a complete slavery with all its attendant degradation; shutting out every prospect of justice, improvement or happiness. Is not this then the picture of Asiatic nations?—Is it not the true account of every Indian government? The compact by which they were first mutually bound in copartnership,—the subject and the sovereign,—is still nominally preserved in the tax that is levied by the one, the soil that is held by the other, with the understood condition that the one must be paid, the other cannot be taken away, so long as that tax is discharged; in the next place, the tax has been increased beyond the first equitable amount, the people have been impoverished, and their minds debased; the consequence has been, that a door has been opened to successive increases of every species of vexatious exactions, till the last proofs of deterioration are to be

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seen in the frequent and imperious necessity for remissions,
which otherwise could never have been called for; these the British
Government take to themselves great credit for allowing, com-
pulsory though the grant be in reality; and this, notwithstanding
the abolition of a great number of distressing imposts which were
the last resource of the Mahratta farmers of the revenue. In
reviewing these important preliminaries, a few points affecting the
interest of the sovereign and the cultivator have been casually
alluded to, which may be considered more at length after a more
full account of the revenue system subsequent to the days of Ak-
bar,—up to this last period we may perceive the working of three
distinct systems;—first, the most ancient, allotting one-tenth to the
priesthood, one-tenth to the king, both in kind, or in the aggregate,
one-fifth of the produce; then one-sixth to the king, one-sixth to
the priesthood, likewise in kind:—and these by an estimation of
existing produce, part only being levied in kind, the greater part at
a fixed rate of commutation: thirdly, one-third to the king, who
allotted as he thought fit, one-sixth to the priesthood, or objects of
religious care, of all persuasions. The first or most ancient prac-
tice, was a verbal agreement, (Ookhtee, Sunskrit:) or estimated in-
spection of the produce, called by the Moghuls Nuzur undazi, by
the Mahrattas, Nuzur Pahanee*: the second, introduced by the
Brahmins, and inculcated in their law books and shasturs, was also
indefinite as to the soil and produce, but rated at a certain measure
or weight, and therefore both of these systems, the more ancient,
and that substituted by the Brahmins, were liable to enormous and
incalculable abuses: the third system, or Akbar's, introduced by
Todur Mull, was a heavy tax, but well defined, and therefore gladly
welcomed in comparison of that which preceded it: the two first
left the ryot to the mercy of the officers appointed to collect the
share of the prince; the latter annulled these offices, and acknow-
ledge the ryot's claim upon the soil by occupation. It declared
that the old compact between the ryot and the prince stood good,
only differing as to the quantum to be considered as an equivalent
for the usufruct of the soil, which Akbar fixed agreeably to the
directions of the Hindu law, at one-sixth for the king, one-sixth
for the priesthood, collectively, one-third: 1st, upon a measurement,
or land survey, rated at a mean of ten or nineteen years' produce. In
these three systems we may trace first, The gochurma or ox hide
of land; the turub, or plough of land. 2ndly, The Khundee of land,

* Ocular survey or estimate.

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the *moora*, the *mun*, the *karika* and so forth, that is, lands requiring
a *khundee*, *moora*, *mun*, *karika*\* and so forth of seed to sow them, by
which rule the produce was estimated, and the government share
fixed. 3rd, The *beega*, on a measurement or actual survey by the
rod, or *kathee*, which, even when imperfectly performed, preclud-
ed some abuses though it made room for others.

The preceding is a very cursory but I believe a faithful outline
of the revenue system of India from the earliest period to the days
of Akbar, in which also the proprietary right of the soil as inti-
mately connected with the revenue, would appear to belong to the
sovereign originally, and to have been held in copartnership with
the ryot, the sovereign being as much entitled to his share of the
produce, as the *ryot* to his possession of the land, the assignment
or share of the produce for the service of religion, being altogether
distinct from the sovereign's. Although there is a very general
understanding amongst the best revenue servants of the British Go-
vernment that a great difference of practice prevails in the manage-
ment of every province of this empire, I hope it will not be thought
presumptuous in me to differ so far from Sir John Malcolm, as to
say, that far less attention has been paid to the first principles of
the revenue system than they should have received, and much con-
fusion and misunderstanding occasioned by crude and narrow views
of mere local usages. It is a very gross mistake to suppose that
in general things, or matters of universal concern, men will essen-
tially differ from each other, whether in this or any country: it is
equally repugnant to reason to suppose that in their civil or religi-
ous institutions any thing so entirely novel should be discover-
able to which we cannot find a parallel elsewhere. The character
of man receives an impression from his government, his religion,
or his country; but the complication of all such causes superinduced
in every age is capable of explanation by a clear, steady and patient
investigation; there are certain marks which determine each cause
in particular, and indications of their combination with others which
may be brought to light by those who will be at the pains to dis-
tinguish them.

Had there been any plea of right for the zumeendars, the govern-
ment of such countries would have been in reality a pure aristocracy,
the monarch, an elective member of that body. The idea of such an
aristocracy is perfectly visionary, even more so than the republics
or assemblage of republics which were conjured up out of the provi-

* Dry measures for grain—the precise contents of which, are hereafter stated.

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sionary defences against misrule, oppression and annihilation: these both, the village institutions, and the zumeendars, or poligars, or feudatory chiefs, or petty principalities being both, the last remaining appliances of a people groaning under an accumulation of evils, entailed by wars, famines and exorbitant taxation. The first sovereigns, aboriginal Hindus, exercised their power with moderation, because they needed subjects and cultivators; their successors, coming in upon the train of those who had brought the soil under tillage, abused this office to the destruction of their people, and the destruction of the husbandman's first profits, his greatest motives to energy; the third party, the Brahmins as conquerors or interlopers, introduced a new and definite code, more grievous as to the amount, yet more certain as to the method; but this was of short duration, since there were no checks to its infringement, and it was soon followed up by the innumerable and cruel exactions which were modified by the wise and humane laws of Akbar. As the first sovereigns needed subjects and cultivators, so Akbar was driven to this measure by the review of the extensive conquests bequeathed to him by his predecessors. Had he not pursued this conciliatory course, he would have lost all his empire ten times quicker than it had been acquired by the Moslem's sword. This memorable revision of the financial arrangements of India furnishes us with a clue to the principle which determined the royal revenues, and the practice of its native princes. It discovers to us what the spirit of the government was, as reformed by Akbar, the effects of misrule exemplified in the conduct of the aristocracy, if we may so call it, subsequent to the days of Akbar, and the circumstances in which the country and people came under the hands of the British at the conclusion of the last war.

I believe it is altogether unnecessary to canvass the merits of those speculations which determine the rights of either of these parties from a few Sunnuds, (rescripts,) Ultumgahs, (investitures,)* or danuputrus, (charitable grants or gifts.) What we have now been investigating is long anterior to these instruments, and for such documents as ancient inscriptions on stone, or copper, they go no further back than the prevalence of the Brahminical system, none earlier than the 7th century: the greater part of them also are very questionable. I shall mention but one instance to prove this last assertion. In the first volume of Colonel Wilks's History of the South of India, he notices in a note appended to a translation of a grant

* See an Ultumgah very beautifully transcribed in the 1st vol. of the Statistical Tables with facsimiles of the donor's, Uzeczooddeen's, royal seal (mootaliqu sikku). The translation is also annexed.

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of land bearing date Kali Yoog 4517, of Salivahan 1349, (A. D. 1416) after the year (of the cycle) Plava, "that probably there has been some error in copying, or engraving one of those dates, for the date of this instrument he observes, differs exactly eleven years from the Deckan mode of reckoning which is precisely the same as that between the reckoning of the Deckan and of Benares." Now the fact is, this difference of eleven years was a scheme to conceal from the Mahomedans and Europeans the origin of their aeras and mode of reckoning time, for which purpose the aera of Bengal and India north of the Nurbudda was thrown back exactly eleven years, the difference that then obtained 1791; when Mr. Davis published his Essay in the 3rd Vol. of the Asiatic Researches, and when Mr. Marsden wrote his Essay for the Philosophical Transactions, and now also at this present time. But this alteration was not so old as Akbar's father's time, and therefore could not have been inserted on a copier-plate, A. D. 1416. We cannot therefore be too cautious in drawing conclusions from such documents, as to the absolute rights of the cultivator in the soil, though the fact of the prince receiving revenue is to all intents and purposes sufficient to attest that right, which is consequent on co-partnership in the produce, both of the one and other party.

It may be thought an unusual argument perhaps to affirm that the very word revenue, implies rent; *Reditus*, a consideration issuing yearly out of lands and tenements, and is so understood by all European nations; even now the Spanish word is renta, the Italian rendita; if such then be its true import we are to consider it as a confirmation of the foregoing argument, and so also of tenure. Upon some one or other kind whereof all land is held, the tenths or tythes of temporalities, as spiritual offerings, were known to our Saxon and Norman forefathers as *Dismes*, or Decimes. So we read in the statutes of a perpetual Disme in the 2nd and 3rd year of Edward 6th Cap. 35. See also Holinshed's Chronicle in Henry 2nd, fol. III. The Roman cultivators were taxed by the Decumian, publicans as they are called in Scripture, and they themselves were like the *kools* of India, Inquilini, or Coloni: (see Virgil Eccl. IX. Sec. 4,) our ancient Saxon agriculturists (clown or serfs) likewise, were of the same kind; the Spanish Alquilador, is the Roman inquilinus, or

* This is still the term used by the Portuguese in their conquered territories subject to the viceroyalty of Goa. See the subsequent part of this Essay under the head of Goa Revenues and Land Tenures; also the statistical tables of that province under the head of Foreign Resources.

GOA
HISTORICAL
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colonus holding his lands of another, for the usufruct of which he pays his liege lord the tenth, or whatever may be his share.

And thus having shown the principal arguments in proof of the understanding or mode in which the ryut or cultivator holds his lands, we may proceed to the consideration of the Revenue System of India, subsequent to the days of Akbar to the present time. From the foregoing we may divest ourselves of any fanciful views of the antiquities of village republics and meerassee tenures, such as they are accounted to be by the many industrious writers on this subject. We may treat the zumeendars and wuttundars as they are respectively officers armed with the sovereign's authority to collect and superintend his revenues, or his diploma to cultivate lands on certain conditional services, and with certain reservations or rents, to their superior. We may consider the ryut in the light of the first occupant who has tilled the soil, or holding it as a fee or feudum, in which are comprehended both Enam landholders, occupying on grants which are of the nature of that tenure which in English law is called Allodium—property indeed in the highest degree, though not an absolute dominion; and that which requires the payment of a certain rent which was called *feudum*, to illustrate which we may adduce Cambden's definitions of these tenures. All lands and tenements wherein a man hath a perpetual estate to him and to his heirs, are divided into Allodium, and Feudum: *Allodium* is defined to be every man's own land which he possesseth merely in his own right, without acknowledgment of any service or payment of any rent. *Feudum* is that which we hold by the benefit of another and in the name whereof we owe service or pay rent, or both, to a superior lord, and all our land in England, the crown land which is in the King's own hands (in the right of his crown), excepted, is in the nature of Feudum, or Fee. For though many a man hath land by descent from his ancestors, and many others have dearly bought lands for their money, yet is the land of such nature, that it cannot come to any, either by descent or purchase, but with the burden that was laid upon him who had Novel Fee, or first of all received it as a benefit from his lord, to him and to all such to whom it might descend or any way be conveyed from him. So that there is no man in England that hath *directum dominium*, that is the very property or demaine in any land, but the prince in the right of his own crown. For though he that hath a fee hath *Jus perpetuum* and *utile dominium*, yet he oweth a duty for it, and therefore it is not simply his own. For he that can say most for his estate, saith

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thus; I am seized of this or that land, or tenement, in my demaine, as of Fee, and that is as much as if he said: It is my demaine, or proper land after a sort, because it is to me and to my heirs for ever, yet not simply mine, because I hold it in the nature of a benefit from another.

In like manner the zumeendars conform exactly to the Lords mesne, or landlords in old English history, that is, owners of manors or lands who by virtue thereof, have tenants holding of them in fee likewise, and yet they held of a superior who is called Lord paramount, and these mesne Lords or landlords, were perfectly distinct from the feudatory Barons, or Knights who held of the king by especial grants, on consideration of certain services and rents differing from the ancient usage above described. Should it be asked on what ground this assertion be made; I answer, that the latter tenure, as above described, of the mesne lords, was most ancient, for they might be mean men, or great landholders, with extensive property purchased, or acquired by their own industry and skill. These mesne lords, or landlords, might be of humble or high birth; their titles and the distinction of their manors were derived, from the very same circumstances as the kools of India, the coloni of Rome, or the alquilador of Spain*. This property might be vested in men of high, or low degree, for agriculture was so essentially necessary an occupation to a nation, that it was considered honorable to be a cultivator of ever so humble an estate, and the word manor in the strictest acceptation throughout every period of the past History of England, signifies land cultivated by the landlord himself, whereon he resides and which goes by his name; but the Baronial, or Knight's fees were held of the king as lands parcelled out after conquest, or confiscation, in reward of the military service, for which they were bound to attendance on him at call, to allegiance, for the monies or rents he might prescribe without any reference to the more ancient usage of the sovereign and the coloni, or *adscriptitiones glebi*. It was first instituted by the Roman Emperors, and the principle carried into the court of Charlemagne,—whence it came afterwards to be observed by the Norman barons; but before such novelties were introduced by the Roman Emperors, there was no such practice or feudatory aristocracy in any part of the world. After Charlemagne the whole of France was divided into fiefz; and arriers fiefz: that is, into fiefz or knight's fees and mesne fees, the former of which were immediately granted by the king for personal service in war, in reward

* Three distant institutions, purposely adduced.

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for distinguished bravery or attachment to his cause; the latter
either the ancient fees of the coloni, or clowns holding of the king,
which in the Indian Empire are called meerassees*, or kanjatchikars,
or kools: or the tenants at will, ooprees as we call them in the
Mahratta empire, occupying of the coloni, or kools, whether barons,
or knights, or zumeendars, whether men of high or low degree,
whether small or large proprietors. The value of the most ancient
tenure was in England, in France, in ancient Rome, and so also
in India, the most advantageous, and appreciable by all parties. The
second was brought in by the fluctuation of fortunes, of wealth, in
this or that country, by some causes probably independent of each
other, but working to the same end: for when those who hold
their lands on such indeterminate principles, are oppressed or bur-
thened with excessive service or rent, they in their turn burthen
their tenants in a like reckless manner, and the issue is that ruin,
whereby the manorial rights of the barons and knights are entirely
lost, and their lands revert to the true coloni, or agriculturists, who
cultivate their own property for the general good of their country†.
This has been the fate with the Manors of England, and the Fiefz of
France, which have for the most part passed away from the families
of those military barons, or knights, to whom they were first assign-
ed, and reverted to the descendants of those who first received them
at the hands of the Prince, or held them by his consent; who
bestowed their labour on the king's land, who cleared and culti-
vated it, and paid as an acknowledgment for the right of usufruct,
one-tenth of the produce.

* The office of the meerassee in India corresponds to that of the meersman of Ireland.

† Compare this picture with that of India, subsequent to the introduction of the zumeendaree system by Lord Cornwallis. When, however, the amount of Revenue payable by the zumeendar to the Government became fixed, no efficient measures appear to have been taken to define or limit the demand of the zumeendar upon the ryots who possessed an hereditary right of occupancy, on condition of either cultivating the land or finding tenants to do so. Without going into detail to show the working of the system, it may be sufficient to quote the opinion of Lord Hastings as recorded in 1819, when he held the office of Governor General of India. "Never," says Lord Hastings, "was there a measure conceived in a purer spirit of generous humanity and disinterested justice than the plan for the permanent settlement in the lower Provinces. It was worthy the soul of a Cornwallis. Yet this truly benevolent purpose, fashioned with great care and deliberation has, to our painful knowledge, subjected almost the whole of the lower classes throughout these Provinces to most grievous oppressions so guaranteed by our pledge, that we are unable to relieve the sufferers: a right of ownership in the soil, absolutely gratuitous, having been vested in the person through whom the payment to the state was to be made, with unlimited power to wring from his coparceners an exorbitant rent for the use of any part of the land."

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When we take into consideration the remarkable distinctions
between the mesne fees, or landlords, in fact the kools or meeras-
sees' or kanjatchikars' tenures and the baronial or knight's fees, we
shall perceive that there has been as great a misunderstanding
between disputants in India on this curious, important, and intricate
question, as there is in regard of those who maintain that there is
no sort of parallelism or congruity between the civil institutions and
Governments and people of Asia, or India at least, and the rest of
the world, or Europe it may be: for those who have spoken of
knights' fees have considered the zumeendars holding in virtue of
like tenures, little reflecting upon the rise and progress of the military
service from its first devices in the courts of Imperial Rome, the Em-
pire of Charlemagne, and the subsequent Norman conquests. They
suppose the zumeendar's tenure old, as ancient perhaps as Homer's
days at least, when he speaks of the ἔχημενδαρ, though still they can-
not rid themselves of the remembrance that there must have been
some bounden service or rent paid after all by him who cultivated,
to him who owned the land: they rob the king of his land, yet
they cannot invest the zumeendars with his sovereign authority
over the state. What is a stronger proof of this last fact, than,
that the instant Lord Cornwallis had decided in favour of this ano-
malous practice, the zumeendars were denied, as in justice they
should have been, (and even the advocates of the zumeendaree
principle admitted) to call in the aid of the sovereign power, which
was coercive, and could exact the fulfilment of the ryot's un-
derstood compact with his prince. The ryots actually refusing to pay,
the zumeendars fell into arrears with the Government, their estates
were sold to discharge the revenue, and in a few years this class of
proprietors, stripped of all but an empty title, were involved in inex-
tricable ruin, either in consequence of legal process, or the temptations
which their newly acquired authority had held out to them, for the
display of dignity, which their proper incomes could not support.

The zumeendaree system was in fact the creation of men wonderful-
ly interested to confer the benefits of European institutions and free-
dom on a people, of which institutions and freedom they had neither
studied the principles nor ascertained the practical bearings. Shall
it be said that there can be any doubt, after this, that there are any
persons who possess an absolute property, a plenum dominium, as
the lawyers term it, in the soil? Can it be supposed that the
king collects his revenue without right? the ryot or cultivator is
oppressed and injured when he employs some portion of his labour

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and capital to his sovereign's maintenance? Can it be said that the zumeendars were like the barons or knights of imperial Rome or Charlemagne's, or our Norman forefathers' court? That those who held of the barons for an indefinite rent or service, the villici of Rome, or the feudatories' serfs, were entitled to the soil because they paid that indefinite rent or service which was held by their superiors of the king, on an equally indefinite tenure? It may be thought that a certain rate and a prescribed tenure implied a compact which no arbitrary power could annihilate, no conquest could obliterate. Thus when matters were pushed to the extreme, the old principle turned up,—the wisdom of the first most ancient rule, its universal acceptability and justice and advantage was seen through the mist of past ages; the principle by which the lands were measured and the king's share fixed by the patriarch Joseph in Egypt, or the Mosaic laws, was seen at length to be the grand and essential procedure of a wise and upright policy, a sacred and universal law.

Thus I have attempted to set the most striking facts of this subject, which illustrate the universal influence of a few simple principles, in a clear light. When we have brought ourselves to understand that this reasoning reaches to all subjects in the abstract, we shall be able to effect all the good that we as British and Christian subjects enjoy, but until then, we may propose a variety of remedies for which the body politic is unsuited; because we take not up the whole subject, either of the remedy or of the disease, suggesting partial helps and intermitting their application, we undo with one hand what we had done with the other, and wonder at the conclusion of our labours that we do not see the same effects here, which are seen in our own country, when in truth we have entirely overlooked, so to speak, both the capacity of the patient to receive, and the nature and the probable effects of, the remedies contemplated.

In the course of these researches I have discovered a variety of traces of some ancient tenures, indicated by the same terms and definitions. The hide of England, the plough, the oxgang, and so forth, are the same as the *Praj*, the *Gochurma*, the *hul* of India: the estimate by the quantity of the seed necessary to sow the land is a more recent method of accounting its extent and produce, which shows that the people had multiplied, and cultivation extended to those places which were not so fertile as to be reckoned with the better sorts. All these methods of measuring and valuing land were surpassed by actual measurement and classification, and this is that point in which the patriarch Joseph's conduct as a minister, evinced the judicious-

45

ness of the prince's selection, and the wisdom and integrity of the delegate, for there could be no oppression where the principle of taxation was just and equitable to all parties, no uncertainty in the amount, where the extent of the land was declared and the quantity of the produce falling to the share of the prince and the subjects fixed by an act of mercy and prudence, attaching them to the soil and to their liege lord.

The natural predilection a man intuits for his country, to his people, and to his own patrimonial land, is the strongest incentive to industry and obedience; to this Joseph added another, a debt of gratitude which connected the people and their prince by one common tie. Do we then desire a model of a wise fiscal administration? This is to be accounted superior to all others, a model which leaves no room for injustice, because the land is appraised at its value and produce from actual measurement, assessed to its most ancient and correct rent, not allowing of any second or third agency, not permitting prince or priest to interfere with the subject, and therefore shutting the door against all such exactions which might induce after governments to appropriate to themselves the unjust extortions of their officers. Had it not been an equitable arrangement for all parties we should not have found the tenths or tythes so universally assigned to the prince. The effects of taking any thing beyond that amount as exemplified in different cases, is a corroborative testimony to the necessity of fixing some proportion of the produce, and the wisdom shewn in that very amount which was then appointed.

I have shewn in an essay on the primitive universal standard of weights and measures, that the land measure of the patriarch Joseph was the most scientific and ingenious that could have been devised even in these days of science, refinement, and experience. The length of the measure by which the ancient *apovpa* was determined, was exactly the 72,000,000th of the earth's polar circumference, according to the last and most correct accounts of Laplace and professor Airy's computations from the trigonometrical operations conducted by the most eminent men in different parts of the globe; one hundred of such measures squared, or ten thousand square measures, are *exactly* equivalent to the four millionth part of the mean superficial degree on the earth's surface. Considering it to be an oblate spheroid, the proportion of the axes, is precisely that assigned by professor Airy, and the surface calculated by the very strictest mathematical rules: this furnished the Egyptians of old with a principle of measurement which has never since been departed from; it is the

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rule and standard of the superficial measures throughout the world. By imparting the system of measures and weights of the patriarchal times, Joseph obviated all possibility of uncertainty which precluded the inlet, in short, of so much fraud and injustice, that had it been overlooked, it would have been fruitless to fix any proportion or rent to be paid to the prince, whether in money, or corn, or fruits; but this was the criterion which stamped the intentions of the minister with an intelligible sign to the poorest ryot, or cultivator, that he might expect justice, and must acquit himself of his duty. What greater obligation indeed can we lay on any man to do what is right, than to set him the example; what pretext can he advance, when all that could be taken from him was vested in him again with the glorious example of a just and merciful prince, to observe his part of the compact in the spirit as well as the letter? This was Pharaoh's emissary to the heart and understanding of his subjects, this was his mandate to his people. Keep your soil, pay your rents, love your king and defraud no man, neither superiors nor inferiors, since "he who might the advantage best have took, found out the remedy," to bind you in allegiance to him in dealing with you according to your necessities, since he left no measure, not to the very standards by which his corn was to be meted, his rents paid, or the lands ascertained, without a perfect and intelligible rule. Let us look closely into the administration of Noorshirvan and Akbar, and we shall be compelled to admit that some such policy was the most prominent feature in the reign of these illustrious and good monarchs. The eye can rest on no such cheering objects as on these three: the governments of Joseph in Egypt, of Noorshirvan in Persia, and Akbar in India; their names will be imprinted in the last institutions of this globe, for the motive of all was the same, and being substantially excellent will outlast all which are defective.

We should search in vain for any thing superior to this in the annals of Rome. Greece indeed it would be needless to instance, for the revenues of Greece were entirely drawn from foreign sources. So long as Rome was a republic, it preserved the same character of simplicity which marked the institutions of all other governments which had gone before it. When the form of government was changed, the Emperors laid the foundation of a system which by slow degrees deprived the subject of his lands his liberty, and his integrity, substituting a military despotism in the persons of those servants who had distinguished themselves in the aggrandizement of their country, or the exaltation and defence of their masters. What had been paid

47

in money was in the days of the Emperors received in kind; the uncertainty of the measure by which it was collected, introduced a degree of fraud and oppression that could find no palliative but in excessive remissions to the people; and the utmost severity of the imperial displeasure towards the prefects appointed to realize it. The same results appeared in the time of Theodosius which we now witness from a like train of events in India. When we study the state of the revenue in Rome, before and after the Emperors, we are in a better capacity to pronounce on the probable condition of India, if the present revenue system continue in force. There and then, as here, the taxation was changed into a direct demand:—the amount levied was arbitrarily determined at stated intervals of fifteen years, by a new appraisement of the lands and produce,—whether they were newly or formerly cultivated, and the requisitions fixed according to the supposed wants of the state. Being indefinite in the amount the apportionment and collection of these revenues required a multitude of officers and agents, and therefore induced a far greater number of inquisitions and a less exact and effective degree of supervision and justice; the consequence of such changes, added as we have above stated to the receipt of the revenues in kind by an uncertain standard of measure, effectually ruined the agricultural interests of the Empire, the greatest and only resource of the state, the sole safeguard and nursery of that integrity, freedom, and political strength, which might have enabled it to withstand the tyranny, and lawless rapacity of the Emperors or the fierce inroads of the barbarians of the north. The very same financial system, has recently been bequeathed to the British Government by its predecessors in power,—the same misrule has produced a like state of society and political distress, which may be traced through all its ramifications and workings from the earliest period to that epoch when Akbar arrested the hands of the extortioner, and thence onward to the day when these sacred duties devolved on a great and Christian nation, actuated by no feelings but that of justice, and no aim but that of the welfare and improvement of those they had conquered.

It would be impossible for any dispassionate and diligent inquirer to rise from the study of the institutions of antiquity, whether of Egypt or Rome, or the infant kingdoms of Europe under the government of their earliest monarchs, and not observe a close, and very striking analogy to all that characterizes the measures and issues of Asiatic finance. What has determined the slavery or liberty, the

change for the better, or the worse there, individually, or in connection with other things, has wrought the same consequences in India, although it is not to be doubted that climate and extraneous causes and universal law, may also have superinduced modifications which are to be distinguished and taken into account.

So far as they are correctly apprehended and compared, the parallelism will be found to hold good, whether the tenures by which the soil is held, or the rent paid, conform to the more ancient practice, or to that subsequent to the institutes of imperial Rome:—when however the prototype is lost sight of, the originality of the joint property or interests of the cultivator and the sovereign, in the soil and produce, is usually confounded with the feudatory institutions of a military code, perfectly foreign in its every feature to that on which it was grafted. Hence initiated an anomalous system throughout Europe, which embarrasses the civil code with a multitude of legal difficulties surpassed only where anarchy has blotted out all evidences of earlier institutions. In many countries despotism still continues to direct attention to the obligations we owe to the observance of those more ancient principles for every present security of right and property, since every change in civil and religious security, which has supervened elsewhere, has arisen out of a disregard or misapprehension of the relative position of the higher and lower estates of the body politic. And although some amelioration may be anticipated from any improvement in the revenue management, it must be accompanied by a corresponding consideration for the moral instruction of the people, which without the groundwork of sound religious principles,—something indeed very superior to that now put in operation, will only call forth discontent, alarm and opposition. And not in a less degree must such improvement have reference to those ancient and simple institutions, which, Janus-like, must ever look equally either way, in the spirit of power and justice, to the prince and to the people; in the spirit of wisdom and conciliation, to past experience and future responsibilities.

It is essentially necessary moreover that in every such inquisition of proprietary right between man and man, or between the Government and its subjects, the most full, equal and impartial administration of justice should be enforced without any reference to caste or creed, or rank, or prejudices, forasmuch as with one and all of these, we, as Christians, have nothing to do; they form the strongholds of idolatry, and will foster and perpetuate that idolatry so long as there is a weak or wicked man to succumb to them. Can it be

asserted that any good can come of education, when we pull down with the one hand what we raise at vast labour and expence with the other? The laws of a country are to be respected indeed so far as they have the impress of law; that is, as they are uniformly just, influential, and operative; but if defective in any of its requisites they must discredit and ruin our cause; the whole must be received, the code of law, in its entire spirit, or abrogated altogether, should it be found to be at variance with the principles of universal equity, or customary usage. But how can the Mahomedan be reconciled with the Hindu, or the Brahminical code with those laws which are the birthright of the aboriginal tribes, the number of whom, lost insensibly in the lower orders of the Hindu castes, exceeds that of all the more civilized tribes put together; or how can the strange and ill compacted elements of these antagonist communities concur with a Christian Government, or co-operate in the work it has in hand for their protection? By the confused interpretation and intermixture of laws, observances, and institutions that have no common foundation, and no common object to accomplish, the support of one, to the prejudice of another, could only be palliated by the most perfect acquaintance with the defects of those abrogated, and the superiority of that which supersedes them; and this can never be learnt till all are well understood. But since this is impossible however desirable, there remains but one alternative—an alternative recommended as much by reason as by humanity. Let every imaginary distinction be set aside, religious freedom have full course; and assuredly education, political liberty, equal justice, not to mention the higher and infinitely more powerful results of Christian instruction, will change this Pandemonium of tyranny and superstition, into a field of intellectual, moral, and physical energy: effecting a reformation of which the most sanguine could not form a just conception, and probably no other policy could induce: then, only, will the Government and the people be equally secure in the enjoyment of peace, exempt, so far as prudential foresight can avert them, from those frequent calamities which defeat our mightiest efforts to introduce a better state of things.

The historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has ingeniously described the right of property as justified by the ancient right of prior occupancy. Arguing from an individual case, he has slurred over the subject of those rights which involve the labour and occupancy of many. The individual who is indebted for his security to the neighbourhood and protection, or countenance of another,

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is mutually bound with him to acknowledge a common right. The step from the first combinations of individual strength, or skill, or sagacity, is imperceptibly advanced to the great social community which either as a monarchy, or republic, or government of whatever sort, concludes all its members in some specific common obligations. He who tills a field for the support of his own family, and he who hunts down the wild animals that would destroy its produce, or he who rears the cattle that may contribute to assist at the plough of the cultivator, must have a joint interest, mutually obligatory on all, to look to, and preserve; this, in the embryo, is the principle of a monarchical government which demands allegiance of the subject, protection of the monarch, and mutual co-operation of all the members to their common preservation and happiness. Whatever excludes this idea, overlooks the design of our creation: it supposes man born for himself alone, and contradicts the state of aggregation in which we every where find human beings. As it is impossible he should accomplish all things by his own individual handy work,—as we find that every thing, great or good, is effected by the co-operation of the many,—as he possesses nothing but what his own hands have earned or made, or his fathers and donors have bequeathed to him, he enjoys in some sort the fruits of other's labours, which belong as much to his fellow-men as to himself. He benefits in common with them, by their experience and counsel in the safeguards they have reared about his dwelling, the security he enjoys from the violence of the elements, the ravages of the beasts of the forests, or the injustice of man. In that sense he is bound to preserve and transmit this common property to others, and can no more be said to possess absolute dominion over the work of his own hands, than the monarch over his people, or the individual himself, over the laws of society of which he is a member. In the first instance the acknowledgment is made to the first great Author of good, in the next it is made to his delegated representatives, to that ruling authority, whatsoever it may be, or in whomsoever vested, which exercises the last offices of mercy: all that is required in both cases is, that the effort of the individual shall not be actuated by a selfish motive, that he shall have for its eventual or remote object, howsoever we may state the ostensible design, the general good of society; whether to lighten the labours of others, alleviate their necessities, or concur with them to some thing useful to the whole collective body: self-preservation instinctively instructs us in difficulties; but self-love narrows our minds, and draws us aside from the wisest counsels of this instinct: it cannot

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therefore be supposed that the latter is competent to determine impartially where the rights of property begin and end. Exclusive or absolute property in any thing was never intended, nor is it compatible with our well-being. In the monopoly, or the despotic government, the axiom is indisputable, and the consequences are seen and deprecated. In the more minute and indistinct questions of individual property, it is only less perfectly understood, and considered, because it requires greater penetration and patience to discover its origin, to watch its transition from the first owner to the more perceptible body compounded of many such owners. Without going to Rome and Greece, we may learn the principles and constitutions of such societies in our own Scriptures; there the subject is not mixed up with irrelevant matter, the progress from the first simple family to the mighty nation is painted with unquestionable fidelity; in which form all are considered as pledged to one compact—a compact which, had war and evil never entered into the world, would from the beginning have made all men the happy servants of one only master and protector.

Should the reader turn to Colonel Wilks' laboured Dissertation on the landed tenures of India, he will perceive that the idea of simple uniform absolute dominion is the great foundation-stone of the visionary fabric on which he and other advocates have reared the exclusive rights of the cultivator in the soil. The nature of the Roman Government under the Emperors, and before that time, is so different in principle; the one avowing no established rule, the latter following in the old beaten track of antiquity and prescriptive usage, that we are not to wonder that the inference thence drawn, without adverting to these distinctions, should be radically unsound. Glancing at the whole range of history, we shall find the magnitude and weight of the institutions of Imperial Rome very considerable in comparison of those which preceded them; those were founded on justice and wisdom, these were the produce of a despotism, which was seen to progress in the bud, the flower, and the perfect fruit to the eventual supplanting of the parent stock.

From the momentous epoch when the virtuous Akbar investigated the mechanism of the great financial and political engine of Indian government, a new æra commenced: a diligent study of Akbar's and his father, Humaioon's, history, will shew, to quote Mr. Hast-ing's words, "where the measures of the present administration ap-proach to those first principles, which perhaps will be found superior to any that have been built on their ruins; and certainly most easy,

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as the most familiar to the minds of the people, and when any devi-
ation from them may be likely to counteract or to assimilate with
them."

Akbar associated the Rajah Todur Mul with Moozuffur Khan. Considering that the round of the seasons corresponded to the lunar cycle of nineteen years, these ministers estimated the produce of the lands from all the accidental diversities occurring within that period : having defined the land measure and classed the land according to its fertility, they concluded the average of the several kinds to be of a middling quality and charged it with a rent to the king, of one-third the gross produce; they imposed on the people a tax of one per cent., for the canoongoes*, who were bound to see the ryots, protected from exaction, and the *kullees* or crops from being embezzled or plundered, as public functionaries or executors of their master's royal prerogative. They procured the remittance of a variety of vexatious taxes, "which used to equal the quit-rent of Hindustan," thirteen of which are particularized by Abool Fuzul; besides all those articles which the natives of Hindustan comprehended under the description of syerjekat. He also granted reliefs for distress and a general indulgence to all husbandmen to suit their own inclinations as to the discharge of the revenue, whether in money, or in kind, by estimation or by agreement, according to the various tenures handed down to them by their forefathers; they ascertained the current prices of every article of cultivation, but here unwittingly overlooked the fluctuation in the value of the precious metals. It is admitted by Abool Fuzul that the settlement of the revenue made by these ministers, was less than that of preceding years: the rates of collection were regulated every ten years in advance by an average struck of the ten that had gone by; that is, in the first instance, from the fifteenth to the twenty-fourth year of Akbar's reign. Such was the revenue system of Akbar, as it affected the land : the duties on manufactures which had been levied on the old principle of the tenths, or *asheree*, were now reduced to five per cent. Well might the people of India speak his praise, who knew so well the principle of a wise and good government : his moderation would be known to the remotest hovel of his dominions ; he reigned twenty-five years after the first decennial settlement was concluded : the language of his minister was the dictate of the master, " Let him strive to increase cultivation and population, and gain the hearts of all our subjects by a faithful per-

* Revenue officers.

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formance of his engagements, and let him consider it as his duty
to befriend the industrious husbandman." When we compare it
with the Hindu revenue system, we may judge of the foresight of
those who reformed the existing practices at the time of his eleva-
tion to the throne. It abolished all those complicated burthens
which required a certain sacrifice of much time, and labour, and
expense to enforce; it dispensed with compulsory services; it was
impartial, certain as to the measure, both of land and corn, and
money. It was certain also, as far as such knowledge could be
expected, as to produce; and the rates of commutation at which
such produce should be received. It disturbed no original rights
of property, neither of the sovereign, nor his subjects: it taxed
no commodities, or articles, but what entered into the daily use
and consumption of the rich and poor; whereby it did not exas-
perate, or drive the great landholders to oppress their vassals or
cultivators: it offered neither discouragement to one sort of cul-
tivation, nor encouragement to another: it left no room for in-
justice or fraud, either in the realization, collection, or payment of
the revenue; it left no plea for murmurings by the introduction of
novel, or the abolition of established usages; each cultivator or
landlord being free to pay, according to any method he preferred.
It held up the conduct of the monarch, as the example to his minis-
ters, and to the people at large: finally, it convicted the sacred
law of the Hindus of being practically unsound and nugatory;
that it was so far good only as it coincided with the previous usages
immemorially established by the aboriginal monarchs of the coun-
try; of all which results we have even yet abundant proof.

As it might be thought of this impartiality or equality of taxation, that it was essentially defective in principle, it is to be remembered that the landlord can cultivate no more than a certain moderate quantity on his own account, with any degree of advantage: if any chose to cultivate more than he could attend to, his charges would in the long run exceed his profits; it therefore held out no encouragement to an avaricious landlord, and kept in view the prospective interest of the king and the cultivator. Again, the effect of an excessive taxation of the rich, would have been to hold out a premium for a still greater degree of exaction from the underlings of the great landlord; the consequences would have reverted to the state, and all parties would have been sufferers. In this is the striking difference between that direct taxation of income in European countries, where the contribution to the expences of the state would

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bear very unequally and grievously on those who had small property, compared with others who were rolling in wealth. In all direct taxation the payment must be regulated on a very different principle to the land tax of India: the introduction of a decreasing tax, proportionate to the diminished extent of each man's property, would have had the effect of an agrarian law, and destroyed that middle, certainly that higher, class of landholders, which interposed between the monarch and his people; which gave as much confidence to the one as to the other, in all concerns of general interest and importance. Akbar found these great landed proprietors; he found also others, with smaller estates. He did not confound either body, he did not deprive them of their rights, or in any way implicate their destruction in his financial measures: what he took in hand he administered to, as a faithful and wise umpire, and dispossessed no one of that inheritance which his fathers had left to him, however acquired.

What a contrast to the zumeendare system of Bengal, a class created by Lord Cornwallis, and crushed almost in the birth? the offspring of an illegitimate parentage, it shewed but feeble signs of life, because it had no claim to that ancient native birthright which distinguished the great landed proprietary class of Akbar's empire; it was impossible that it should have come to honor without the vital qualities of a pure unquestionable origin, in the country to which it was proposed; it had therefore no supports from within, and the government conceiving it imprudent to invest it with any, to which it could not assert its claims, the ryots withold their rents from the zumeendars, thus involved in inextricable difficulties and final ruin. The lesson to be taken from Akbar's measures is this: either not in any wise to innovate, or to propose and carry into effect the most complete reform of abuses, whatever may be the first apparent loss to government.

Amidst all the confusion that followed upon the disorganization of the empire in the two following centuries, by the rise and predatory devastations of the Mahrattas, and various aboriginal tribes, the whole of the provinces subject to Akbar's sway attest the excellence of his plans, by the observance of many usages which he enjoined or enforced, wheresoever they have not been superseded by those of the Mahrattas; and it is no less remarkable a commendation, that this system was extended by Mulik Umbur to other parts of India where the name of Akbar had only reached by report. The great outline of Todur Mul's and Moozuffur Khan's revenue management was

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carried into the Dukhun and Konkun, as well as over the southern provinces of Telingana, where the Moghul authority had never yet been established. In questioning natives regarding the financial settlement of this enterprising and sagacious Abyssinian, I have been told by all those intelligent landholders who have preserved any records of their estates, that the principle was in every respect the same, and the consequences have been acknowledged with equal gratitude, as they are now seen to have been elsewhere overlooked to the manifest injury of the agriculturists.

Here it may be proper to note, that the system of the Brahmins had given occasion to many offices which did not stand forth so prominently in the days of the Moghul emperors, prior to Humai-oon's accession. Those in truth were the days of terror and extir-pation to all the Hindu princes and dignitaries, whatever went for-ward was unperceived, and unheeded, because the Moghuls were too much occupied with conquest and conversion,—the people too much engaged in providing for their own safety, to protest against the creation of a new class of intermediate agents professing, as these did, the assistance and protection of the lower orders. In the vigorous administration of Akbar, they were passed over in silence, but at his death, they re-appeared on the stage, and have played no inconsiderable part in the turbulent reigns of his successors. Such were the Dessaees, Deshmookhs, Deshpandees, and so forth, of whom we have no account in the revenue records of the first Moghul emperors, not so much because the Moghuls contemned the Hindu institutions and laws, but because these agencies had not then come in to full operation, as since.

In the traditions of a great empire we should probably lean in the absence of positive and explicit evidence to either effect, whether it had once formed one great and uniform monarchy, or were a govern-ment compounded of innumerable small republics, to that opinion which the present state of things, the course of past events and the analogous circumstances of other countries, might lead us to believe least exceptionable. The governments of Asia are all despotic: every trait of these governments answers to this portrait. The invidious division into castes, the absence of all judicial proceedings, the castle crowned eminences of India, the courtezans, and the pageants, the courts, the palaces, and the desolate environs of the prince's abode,— all betoken a despotic rule which ill suits, nay, could never assort or be compatible with republicanism in any shape, though it may well agree with a spirit of faction ready to break out as opportunity

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permitted. Thus the true master-key to the whole political constitu-
tion of India is to be tested: for the institutions and laws which can-
not by any force of reasoning or construction be explained on the
hypothetical principles of their advocates, institutions and laws in
fact, which on such principle, have neither now, nor even at any
time been paralleled, are at once rendered intelligible when viewed
in connection with that despotism which has subsisted in the remot-
est ages, and still prevails throughout Asia. It is of little conse-
quence for what objects the offices or usages which have grown out
of an arbitrary government may have been contemplated. A wise
prince, or a just legislature, may devise a variety of expedients for
determinate ends, and to that effect create offices or establish laws:
but a tyrannical master can have no such ends in view. The despot
cares not for eventual consequences, he employs expedients for an
immediate purpose, and those who are thus subjected to him, resort to
any measures which may counteract such purpose, as it is supposed
to be prejudicial. In this way arose the village communities, those
little republics, as they are termed by Sir Thomas Munro, and
Colonel Wilks. "Though probably not compatible with a very good
form of government, they are an excellent remedy for the imper-
fections of a bad one; they prevent the bad effects of its negligence
and weakness, and even present some barrier against its tyranny and
rapacity*." Could any more conclusive argument be proposed as to
the true origin and character of the village institution than this?

Such imperium in imperio, is the most important feature of the
disorganization of all good government. There are other indica-
tions of it; they are less palpable indeed, but less obnoxious to
reform. In the dismemberment of that ancient universal monarchy
of the Indian empire, which is the theme of their legends, their
mythology, and their traditionary tales, the four great ministers of the
state, the *gujaputee*, the *ashwaputee* the *chutraputee*, and the *nri-
putee*, the master or ruler of the elephants, the commander of the
horse, the royal standard or parasol-bearer, and the commander
of the infantry, usurped the empire as well as the authority of their
master, and parcelled it out between themselves; the former, occupying
the North of India, and his capital, Hustinapoor, or Delhi: the
second, Rajpootana, Goojrat, and Malwa, his capital at Nehrwalla,
the modern Puttun: the third, the Dukhun, or Maharashtra, and Telin-
gana, his capital Taguru or Deoghur, the modern Dowlutabad: the
fourth Kurnata and Draveed, his capital Anagoondee. Those who

* Elphinstone's Report of the Dukhun, and the territories of the late Peshwa.

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have been employed in any diplomatic capacity, and deciphered
the long inscriptions and titles on the enormous seals attached to
the native princes' letters, will perhaps have noticed the use of
these epithets or titles; their allusion to these very ancient minis-
terial offices, however, may perhaps not at first have occurred to
them. All the most valued titular dignities of the great princes of
India may be classed under one or other of these heads: and from
such data, we might infer, independent of traditionary tales, and
legendary poetry, that the boundaries and locality of each minister's
government was pretty nearly as above stated. Many other gen-
tlemen have received the same account of these from the natives in
different parts of India: Dr. Buchanan in Kurnata, Colonel Tod in
Rajpootana, Mr. Sterling in Cuttak, and Colonel Mackenzie in
Mysoor and Draveed. There is a considerable difference in the
places assigned as their seats of government from that which I have
given above; but that they really did exist is highly probable. Mr.
Sterling notices a highly curious passage in the Ayeen Akberry.
Speaking of the game of cards, Abool Fuzul observes: "This is
a well known game. At first the pack consisted of twelve kings,
with eleven cards, dependant upon each, in the following order:
1st, Ashweput, the king of the Horses; he is painted on horseback,
like the king of Delhi, with the chutter, the alum, and other en-
signs of royalty. 2nd, Gujput, the king of the elephants, is mount-
ed on an elephant, like the king of Orissa. 3rd, Nurput, the king
of men, like the king of Beejapoor; he is seated on a throne," &c.
The chutraputtee is not mentioned. Hence it is probable that the
remembrance of these ministerial dignities was handed down from
age to age, and familiarized to every one by the game and pictorial
resemblances. In another part, Abool Fuzul says: "the insignia of
royalty are four in number, the aurung, or throne; the chutter,
or canopy; the sayuban, or aftabgeer, a species of umbrella; fourth-
ly, the kokebah, or stars of gold and silver:" it is probable these
were under the custody of the four dignitaries of the empire.

This dismemberment was followed up by further disorders, when
each of the nobles or chiefs possessed himself of as much as he
could grasp within his reach, and India, which once acknowledged
one law, was subdivided indefinitely into petty lordships and
states having no common interest, or so much as intercourse with
each other. Hence the provincial dialects, which derived from
the same language, could with difficulty be recognized in the mouth
of the poor peasant, as having any sort of relationship to each

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other: anarchy, the natural jealousy of their chiefs, and dissuetude of communication, precluded a return to the former order of things, though there had been a native prince of sufficient talent and bravery to bring together the fragments of his ancestor's dominions. In this method, the mighty fabric crumbled down, of which we can only now trace the foundations and the disjointed remains: the distinctions, or curious workmanship of some of these, enable us to recognize the splendor and vastness of the ancient structure. In examining some curious Mahomedan buildings at Ahmedabad, erected by the Moghul imperors some three or four centuries ago, I observed that many of the mosques, serais, and ruozus, or mausoleums were constructed from the remains of former Hindu edifices of like solidity, style and beauty: wherever they had fallen down, it appeared that large fragments were ornamented with the same minute and curious carving and figures which are to be seen on the wrecks of the ancient cities of Madura, Nehruvala, Anagoondee, Gairsopa and Chundrawuttee; also in a more perfect state at Aboogurh. These fragments were smoothed and cut, or fashioned by the Mahomedans with the Hindu carving inwards, and so might have been altogether concealed from view till the lapse of ages brought them to light, and showed whence the Mahomedans had got the original pattern of those splendid and graceful buildings which were the pride of their Sultans. In my subsequent residence in India, in Belgaum particularly, I likewise observed that the Brahminical temples, and the forts built under worshippers of this persuasion, are constructed of remains of former Boodhist temples which were not treated quite so unceremoniously or indignantly by the Hindu architect: they are seen built up, or thrust in, pellmell, indifferently with any other materials, though how far this practice may go back, is hard to say: for one ancient building consists on the ground floor of a curious hall, or temple of black granite, supported on four massive pillars, of most curious and beautiful workmanship, surmounted by a flat stone roof: on taking down a broken pilaster on the outside to make some repairs, it appeared that the walls surrounding the principal chamber were hollow, or rather filled up here and there with blocks of stone, and old mutilated pillars, thrown in at random, to stop up the vacuities: where the outer face of the stone was altogether plain, the interior presented a number of mouldings, ornaments and figures, not running parallel, but at an angle with the edges of the stone, which the stone-masons could scarcely have sculptured for the mere

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amusement of throwing away. The date of the construction of this, and some other contiguous buildings, appears, by two inscriptions in Halla Canarese, in my possession, to be A. D. 1201; ninety-two years previous to the first irruption of the Mahomedan armies into the Dukhun.

These particulars may be considered as characteristic of the practice of the various sects and nations who have successively occupied the political arena: the Hindus, whether Jyns or Brahmins, built in the old materials of the buildings they had destroyed into their new edifices, without concealment or symmetry, being altogether indifferent to appearance or opinion: the Mahomedans employed them also, but concealed their antiquity and the place whence they had gotten them, squaring all to their own notions of propriety, and solidity. Time has thrown down this ornamental facade, and discovered the idolatrous memorials of a by-gone race, known only from tradition: such are the parallel circumstances of the magnificent architectural monuments, and the civil institutions of India, as a component part of Government, such their successive modification. In the beginning of Indian monarchy, these fragments were all disposed in one uniform method, in their proper places; standing out, some as humble unpretending decorations to a great and magnificent work, embodying thousands, which individually, attracted the admiration of the passenger, though they formed a very insignificant place in the general structure, now only seen in ruins.

The whole of the petty states and all the extensive governments into which the country is divided, were anciently compacted together in this very manner: they all retain the character, more or less discernible, of the first architectural design: to understand them we must consider them in such assemblage, and then in the successive changes they have undergone under workmen of different tastes, and various skill: the result will be a conviction, that no advantage can be anticipated from a cursory, nay even the most scrupulous survey of existing usages, or those which have supervened since the Mahomedan or the Mahratta conquests, without adverting to their original objects. In their spirit, all the parties who have been engaged here, are as much opposed to each other, as the republican officers and Emperors of Rome, the Norman barons, or the Saracens of the west, to the Jewish law-giver; but they could not, indeed they dared not, set aside what they found ready to their hands: they departed not from that very course which has occurred in all other political changes throughout the whole period of history, in

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every other portion of the globe. The seeds therefore of that
anarchy, the hotbed itself in which they were sown, a despotic
monarchy, was coeval with the first constitution of Indian govern-
ment. When the season came for each to spring forth into life,
they attracted little or no attention, being lost in the superior
grandeur, and stateliness of the old institutions; but in process of
time they have so completely overgrown the scattered ruins of the
first monarchy, that it is with no little difficulty we can be brought
to believe they are not the constituent and essential ingredients of
the government itself.

Such, whatever be the present condition of the petty states, the
Hindu dignitaries and customary officers of religion, revenue, and po-
lice, was their origin; and we see them starting forth into publicity
as the power of the monarchs was withdrawn, or the original charac-
ter of the first government was obliterated, or forgotten. There is
no mention made in the very old grants of land, discovered by our
countrymen, of Meerasdars, Zumeendars and Wuttundars*, no long
lists of officers as at present, pretending to rights in the soil and
revenue, independent of the pleasure of Government; no village
communities, nor peculiar rights vested in the Patels and Bara-
bulotedar†. All the princes and chiefs and landholders there, avow
their allegiance and duty to the one great sovereign of India, all
hold their lands of him, and carry on every measure in his name;
they all admit their obligations to pay the just rent or revenue
required by their sovereign, who cannot dispossess them of lands
once given away, except in the event of treason, or rebellion, or some
flagitious crime punishable by confiscation of goods: then the land
reverted to its first master, as it does every where else, which is a
sure and unanswerable proof that the first property in the soil
was considered to belong to him, who exercised the chief authority in
the state; the prerogative of confiscating property or showing mercy
belongs to that power alone which occupies the throne, as the vice-
gerent of the all-powerful Being to whom all are subject. Show
then where these prerogatives reside, and it is easy to show also
whence the sovereign authority emanates, and in whom the first
right of property was vested.

Further, as we descend in the annals of history, the Hindu law
and written records of past events still observe the most profound
silence regarding any rights in the soil, but those above stated.

* Hereditary proprietors, landholders and freeholders.

† Village fiacal or mayor, and corporation or officers, subordinate to him,

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The zumeendar's, or Government officer's claim to service, but to no
share in the revenue or land; the village community is still im-
perceptible. At length, at the period of Akbar's death, the seeds
of rebellion break forth anew, the crafty agents of the present
Hindu superstition foment dissensions by every method they can
devise; the people recur to every pretext they had seen in operation
in the great contest of the higher orders, and finally established the
village communities as a remedy for disorders, and a security agaiust
their oppressors. The short-lived rulers, their ministers of a day,
gladly accepted the engagement of a revenue settlement from the
village, collectively with the patel and village officers at their head :
they were content to resign all those police duties into their hands,
which devolved on the state, and could no where be so well attended
to as by the peers and neighbours of the litigants: it left them at
leisure also to abandon themselves to every species of debauchery,
to pass their days either in apathetic indolence, or conquest, or plun-
der: whether the village *republics*, as our countrymen are pleased
to style them, had any real existence before Humaioon's time, is
extremely doubtful; that they are far from being universally pre-
valent, even now, is a sure indication that their origin is comparatively
recent: and so also of the Meerasdaree, Kanyatchi, Junmum*, or
such like rights, as they are understood to be held by the natives,
and by many British revenue servants: for all these originated
with the same order of things, and at the same period.

We come now to a new era in the revenue management of India,
subsequent to the death of Akbar at Agra, in 1605, after a glorious
reign of forty-nine years and eight months. The partition of the
Dukhun between the Nizamshahee and Adilshahee princes, the
former having their capital at Aurungabad, the latter at Beejapoor
had been the means of introducing a distinct system of revenue
management into the respective territories possessed by each state,
which may be very briefly and easily explained. The Dukhun which
A. D. 1293, was wrested from the Mahratta, or Rajpoot princes of
Deoghur, in the course of fifty-three years, became a distinct
sovereignty, entitled the Bahmunee, commencing in the person of
the first king Allaoooddeen Hoossain Gungoo Bahmunee, which
may give some general idea of the rapidity and extent of the Ma-
homedan conquests. In the course of the next century, A. D. 1490—
1507, the Dukhun was still further subdivided into three distinct
sovereignties, Beejapoor, Ahmednuggur, and Golkonda. The first

* Several terms significant of Freehold perfect and unalienable.

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was called the Adilshahee, the second the Nizamshahee state; the first King of the Bahmunee dynasty, shortly before his death, had distinguished the Dukhun into four principal divisions: the district including the capital, extending from Koolburga, as far west as Dabhol; and south, as far as Raichoor and Moodkul, was placed under Mullik Seifooddeen Ghooree: the tract comprehending Choul, or Chewul, on the sea coast, and lying between Jooneer, Dowlutabad, Beer, and Peitun, being the territory of Marhut or Maharashtra, the king committed to the charge of Mahomed Khan the son of his brother Ameer Alee; on the north-east, Mahoor, Ramgir, and a portion of Berar were entrusted to Sufdur Khan Seestance; and Beedur, Indour, Kowlas, and the districts in Telingana, were assigned to the charge of Azim Hoomayoon, son of Mullik Seifooddeen Ghooree.

The conquests of the Tatar princes, the descendants of Timour, and Moghuls in the Deccan were too rapid to be of any long stability. None but Akbar, of all these princes, had given the least attention to the interests of the people. Those possessions which had been acquired by Allaooddeen Khiljee, of the second Tatar dynasty, A. D. 1293-4, were lost to the empire of Dehli by the revolt of the Emperor's dependents in the reign of Gheiasooddeen Toghluk, of the third Tatar dynasty, in 1347. The new and independent government then set up in the Dukhun, was ruled by the Bahmunee dynasty to the year 1489, or 1490, when Adil Khan assumed the insignia of royalty at Beejapoor: at the same time Mullik Ahmed established himself in the sovereignty of the territories under his charge by the title of the first king of the Nizamshahee dynasty. Kootubool Moolk, who exercised the chief authority in Telingana, assumed the style and authority of an independent Sultan shortly after these usurpations, as the first prince of the Kootub Shahee dynasty: the fourth division of the four original Tatar divisions of the Dukhun fell to two other ministers of the Bahmunee kings, who were styled Ummad Shahee, and Bureed Shahee kings: the first prince of the former was Ummadool Moolk, the then governor; the first monarch of the latter, Umeer Bureed a slave who had married into the family of the Bahmunee kings. The Ummad Shahee kingdom was conquered and re-annexed to the Nizamshahee state by Mortiza Nizam Shah; and the Bureed Shahee was conquered by Akbar's troops. Captain Grant Duff, in his History of the Mahrattas, has entirely overlooked the geographical limits of the governments of each of the four ministers, which are marked out

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in an especial manner by the language of the courts, and the extent of the political and revenue arrangements of each state; and it appears to me he did so from the circumstance of some cessions in the Konkun, which were made by Mortiza Nizam Shah the 2nd, then king of Ahmednuggur, to Beejapoor in 1636, ten years after the death of the wise regent, Mullik Umbur. These cessions included all that part of the Konkun which had been under the direct management of Mullik Umbur: Salsette, Bombay, and the immediate coast of the northern Konkun from Basseen to Duman, which had been newly acquired by the Portuguese immediately after the death of Mullik Umbur and the regency of his son Futihkhan.

Attention to these political changes can alone enable us to wade through the complicated principles of the Mahratta finance, as it is seen in the distinct provinces of the Mahratta empire. Turning to the general map, we may observe that the Bahmunee state comprehended all the Konkun, exclusive of the Phonda Punch muhal, which reverted, as circumstances might be favorable to rebellion or defection, first to the Mahomedans, then to the Rays* of Beejanuggur, or Anagoondee: politically and strictly, it pertained to the ancient Deoghur government, for the northern boundary of Kurnata is the Toongabhuddra river, and the coast on the same parallel of latitude; that is, from the mouth of the Gungaolee river, in latitude 14° 30' north, on the west coast, to Kurnool at the junction of the Toongabhuddra and Krishna, thence to Masulipatam at the extremeembouchure of the Krishna river, in latitude 16° on the east coast. Such at least appears to be the geographical boundary in the legendary tales, *Bukhurs*, and *Poorans*† of the Hindus: whatever were the financial measures, if indeed any were ever thought of, they originated with the Tatar princes of Dowlutabad from the year A. D. 1293 to 1347. At least as respects the whole Bahmunee state above and below the Ghauts, this observation is undoubtedly correct.

Next, in the partition of the Bahmunee kingdom, the Savitree river in the Konkun, and the Krishna river in the Dukhun, formed the general line of demarcation of the Nizamshahee and Adilshahee princes, the former having the northern districts, the latter the southern: lastly, on the decline of the Nizamshahee state, and during the management of Futihkhan, the whole of the Konkun then dependant on the Nizamshahee state, revolted, or was ceded

* Rulers, a title of royalty peculiar to Kurnata.

† Historical and mythological narratives, containing some truth with a large quantity of fiction.

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to the Adilshahee government, leaving Baglana and Kolwun under
a mere nominal subjection to this state, or the Moghul emperor.
The coast of the Nizamshahee Konkun from Duman to Basseen, Sal-
sette*, Bombay, and Rewadunda with the village of Chewul, belonged
to the Portuguese. The remainder or Beejapor Konkun from the
Savitree river, south to Cape Ramas, was under the Adilshahee king of
Beejapor, from the year 1489 to 1674, when Seevajee triumphantly
proclaimed his authority over the whole, by the title of king, at Ry-
gurh, on the 6th June, 1674. From that time, the greater part of
the Mahratta empire, the Konkun at least, exclusive of Kolwun,
the Portuguese conquests, the Hubshees of Jingeera and the
Warree Sawunt's territories, have been under the Mahratta rule,
and all the changes in the revenue systems, which have supervened
from time to time, have reference to one or other of the following
empires, the ancient monarchy of India, the Bahmunee dynasty, the
Rays of Anagoondee, the Nizamshahee and Adilshahee sovereignties,
the Mahratta dominion, vested in Seevajee, or his successors, or the
ministers who exercised his authority. The progress of the most
ancient Hindu monarchy has been traced : the spirit of the Bah-
munee administration assimilated to that of the Mahomedan mo-
narchs before Akbar : the spirit of the last days of the Nizamshahee
was in a great degree like that of Akbar's but is by far the most
remarkable as acknowledging and upholding for the first time the
village institutions, as the government of the Moghuls under
Humaioon did, for the first time, that of the dependent authority
of the feudatory lords or military vassals of the empire : before
these periods, their existence was unknown, as actors, in the politi-
cal affairs of India ; the revenues till then had been paid into the
hands of the persons appointed to its collection by the great king
or superior of all, and their assignments paid from the royal or
provincial treasuries. There were collectors and accountants, and
lords of five, of ten, of twenty, and a hundred towns, who were
under a viceroy conducting all the affairs and exercising to a cer-
tain extent the prerogatives of the king ; but in the general confu-
sion consequent on successive invasions, famines, and defections,
the ministers and officers renounced, or threw off their allegiance,
and assumed that independence which has been supposed to confer

* Salsette island is known to the Mahrattas by the name of Sashtee ; Bombay by Moombaee—the Kistna river, so called by Europeans, is the Krishna, the Toombuddra river, the Toongabhuddra, and the Deccan, so written usually by our countrymen, is the Dukhun or country south of the Nurbudda.

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on them an actual proprietary right in the soil; and on the village
institutions at a later day, a right or property, distinct and inde-
feasible, whosoever the sovereign might be. In treating of this sub-
ject, I have pointed out where the royal prerogative resided, and by
whom alone it can be exercised, or delegated to another. There are
also other remarkable proofs of the common, nay universal, assent
to the right or property of the first sovereign, in this, that the
Moghuls who usurped the sovereignty of the governments they
had been appointed to administer, did not style themselves kings,
nor did any of the Hindu poligars or zumeendars, in fact, any
feudatory vassal or military commander, pretend to that absolute
independence of the great monarch of India, which Europeans
maintain: they still held and acknowledged, as tributary to him,
by his royal mandate, and where they usurped the privilege of coin-
ing money, and receiving the rents for their own expenditure, it was
in virtue of a belief that their master's possessions had effectually
and absolutely devolved on them*. With these introductory notices
we descend to the beginning of the 17th century, the last prepara-
tory revolution, may it be hoped, for the intervention of the British
ascendancy, for the reform of all preceding abuses, and for the display
of a more enlightened and humane policy, which probably will usher
in the best and brightest days of its government, and the restoration
of a more peaceful influence over the surrounding kingdoms of Asia.

The concurrence of just and well-advised measures, beyond the
immediate tract for which they were proposed, may be inferred
from the plans of Raja Todur Mul and Moozuffur Khan. During
Akbar's reign, Mulik Umbur, once an Abyssinian slave, now raised
by the caprice of fortune, to the dignity of a minister, virtually the
ruler, of the imbecile and wretched king of the Nizamshahee state,
Mortiza Nizam Shah, was neither slow to perceive, nor profit by, the
methods which his powerful neighbours employed to consolidate their
conquests and attach their subjects to a foreign yoke: he went a
little further only, for he provided a remedy for the existing, and

* Until Tippoo Sultan's time such an infringement of royal prerogative had never been attempted or heard of. He indeed thought it a bold step, and Col. Fitzpatrick in his translation of that prince's state correspondence, gives one letter in which the impudence and cunning of Tippoo, respecting the introduction of a new coinage, bearing his, and superseding the Emperor of Dehli's, title, are avowedly employed to make the most of a bad case.—It was only the other day, that the British Government used to coin in the Emperor's name, and unblushingly proclaimed submission to his regal prerogative; having invariably represented the coinage as issuing out of the royal mints, of Surat and elsewhere, though the coin was actually struck at Bombay, Madras, &c.

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probable prospective, abuses incident on calamitous times of war, civil dissension or famine, which we may now admire, as a masterpiece of prudence, foresight, and humanity, although it is never to be forgotten that it is *but a remedy for these evils*: it is not in any wise calculated to promote that perfect and sound policy, which has the double motive to effect also as much good as it can, while it neglects not to anticipate the precautionary measures to the restraint or supercession of evils.

The first act of Mulik Umbur's government was to abolish all the intermediate revenue agency which had been gradually usurping the character of the farming system; probably it had been confined at by the previous rulers, as a speedier and less troublesome plan of realizing the government demands: officers were appointed with assignments on the revenue, as Desaees, Deshmookhs, Deshpandees, &c., the nature of all which had probably been received by tradition from the first revenue system of the Brahmins, or even their predecessors of the aboriginal Hindu monarchy: whether under that system they were lords of one, two, ten, or a hundred towns, they had now a clear definite assignment in money, with a percentage on the collections. He next determined the actual produce of lands, which he classed under separate heads; arable lands into four sorts, *uwul, doom, seem, charseem*; that is, first, second, third, fourth, according to their productiveness: and the hill lands also, in the same, though somewhat more general, way; he next ascertained the produce, and accordingly fixed the assessment by a fixed commutation (*tusur*), or price, and measure, once for all: the more lands were cultivated, the higher was the government revenue raised, and the percentage of the revenue officers: their interests declined with the decrease of cultivation. Humaioon and Akbar had acknowledged the military zumeendars' titles. Mulik Umbur made the patelships and all revenue offices hereditary, but in doing so, constituted them the bounden securities for the full realization of the government dues, which it does not appear, they had been before that time: as they were responsible to government, the people held the patels and other revenue officers responsible also to them, for their security, and thus drew down upon themselves those grievous exactions which do not enter into the account of government, or in truth form part of the government receipts. When at any time the revenue officers' receipts were brought to light and seized upon by the state, the revenue officers had recourse to new exactions for their personal labour, and the ryot was taught to

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believe that it was the government, and not the revenue officers who had plundered or oppressed him. Mulik Umbur invaded no private property or rights of occupancy, whether the ryots held by Meerassee, or such other description of hereditary tenure, whether by absolute free grants from former kings, still he meddled not with it; and it is to be believed therefore that the construction now put upon Meerassee right is perfectly novel. It involves no more actual interest and property in the soil than before: that is a copartnership which is by ancient compact, that the ryot shall hold and be permitted to transfer his land, so long as he discharges his obligatory rents, but then always with the actual or implied assent of the sovereign, not the village officers, or village community, nor in fact any person but the sovereign himself, or his viceroy. Had Mulik Umbur and Todur Mul so viewed that right, they could not have introduced the land measures, and increase of rent, upon increased cultivation, which there is no doubt they did, although what was once fixed, was once for all fixed, as the revenue of improved land.

The very strong resemblance of Mulik Umbur's plans to those of Todur Mul, has led Captain Grant Duff into an error in supposing that Todur Mul's plans extended to India, in the reign of Shah Jehan. They extended to three districts of Orissa indeed, but no further in the peninsula; by Meen Rajoo's or Mulik Umbur's instrumentality they were extended, as to the general principle, throughout Kandeish and the Mahratta empire; and they were enforced by Suffee Khan and Moorshed Koolee Khan, subsequently, in the Dukhun; as they became known also through Dadajee Kondeo in the Karnatic and Tanjor. Mr. James Grant in his political analysis, says, "the lands, according to Todur Mul's plans, were assessed in the first instance with reference to their fertility, in a proportion varying from one-half to one-seventh of the gross produce, according to the expence of culture or the description of the article cultivated. The government share was then commuted for a money payment; and in time, when a measurement, classification, and registry, had taken place, the regulated assessment was fixed at a fourth of the whole produce of each field throughout the year." The excellence of the two schemes was this, that they considered the interests of the state and the cultivator inseparable: they held out no premium to the abandonment of one field for the cultivation of another, whose produce was less known; they obviated the capricious desertion of lands on false pretexts, or any slight grounds of dissatisfaction; they precluded deception on the part of the ryot,

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or overcharge on the part of the revenue officers; and in fine the ultimate object of both, was the due realization of a certain amount from a province, which they might reckon upon getting at stated intervals: one field with another, one village with another, one district with another, yielding on the aggregate as much one year as another, without reference to the accidental increase or decrease of cultivation, and the absence or neglect of any one cultivator; which equalized a burthen that had been laid on all by previous despotic governments, to make good deficiencies with which the people were unacquainted, and could by no publicity be brought to understand or assent to. On the whole, it may afford us a very instructive lesson how much further the influence of the British name and example might hereafter extend, than to the geographical limits of our immediate possessions. May we have no less attestation to its forbearance and wisdom, if we have no better than that of Todur Mul's and Mulik Umbur's fiscal regulations to their successors.

Mulik Umbur's assessment extended from the Veeturunee river to the Savitree river, the Hubshee's territories excepted. Dadajee Kondeo's assessment, very partially, throughout the Soobhadaree of Dhabol. At the termination of Seevajee's reign, and his son and successor, Sumbhajee, the ancient practice of determining the revenue was superseded by the land measurement termed Beegaonee*. The land measuring rod of Mulik Umbur and Dadajee Kondeo, or his successor in that office, Anajee Dhuttoo, was identically the same, or five cubits and five spans, that is, five and five-sixth cubits, there being six spans or *mooths* to the cubit or *hustu*; that is, 5⅝ × 19.54893 inches, = 114.03542 inches English. I have explained in the fullest manner in my essay on the weights and measures, and their relation to the primitive standard, that the length of this cubit is to be considered exactly the half of the length of the pendulum, vibrating seconds at the temperature of 39½° at the level of the ocean, in latitude 45°, which is, as above stated = one-half 39.09785 inches English: the superficial measure called the Beegah is as to the measure, very different in different places, but the linear measure or standard which determines the length of the *kathee* or measuring rod is identically the same. The measure used by Todur Mul was a square of sixty Ilahee guz, the same as used by Noorshirvan in Persia. It appears from Abool Fuzul that the Hindus had made some rude attempts at measuring the land before

* Measurement by beegahs, varying in superficial extent with the length of the customary linear measure.

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Akbar's time, with the *tenab*, or *usul*, which was a rope of sixty cubits, and in some parts of Persia, this measure is still used. This last Arabic word has the same signification as the Hebrew word khebel, and the Chaldee *asla*, a rope, a cable or measuring line. The use of this is said in the Kamoos to have originated with the ancient kings of Persia, in place of which they afterwards introduced the chain, because rope was subject to great difference of tension. Whether we are to understand that the sixty cubits, herein specified, are the same as the sixty guz of Noorshirvan and Akbar, it is certainly doubtful, though probable, from the frequent misapplication of words: perhaps we should understand the word cubit (diraa) there used, to be of the same length as the guz: the length of that guz was 2½ths of the pendulum = 33.5125 inches; the square of sixty guz = 3119.7 square yards. The Mahratta beegah is a square of 20 rods, that is, a superficial measure of 2280.784 inches English = 4013.87 square yards: the beegah of Guzerat is a square of 20 gunthas, each of five cubits; that is 5 × 19.54893 × 20, squared, or which is the same thing, 100 cubits, or 1954.893 inches squared = 2948.77 square yards. These three are the principal and most extensively used land measures throughout India.

A determinate land measure and a better knowledge of meting and weighing corn and other produce, were among the advantages of the new assessment: the removal of doubt as to the amount to be levied was the greatest gain to the ryot or cultivator; the fixing of the amount to be realized, or revenue of the state in money or kind, at the option of the subject, was the greatest benefit contemplated by the financiers themselves. When we view the subject in this light alone, we cannot but be struck with the inattention that has marked the British revenue officers' proceedings to the first principle, which regulated the one and the other in old times. This prescribed a law to the prince, in the justice and liberty of which the people could not but acquiesce, and with gratitude also. Without adverting to first principles, what could have been anticipated, but the confused and novel fancies of every hasty speculator, who brought what he conceived, additional improvements to a vicious system? The old man can tell us at the verge of the grave, that there is nothing new under the sun, what has been, will be, and what we now see, was, as to the great and essential principle, the same in all times past, with less of error and confusion heaped on it, with less of sophistry or plausibility to recommend its defects to acceptance, or detract from its real excellencies.

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Before the period of these financial measures, in the 16th century there were neither hereditary revenue officers, nor claimants of direct property in the land, nor zumeendars, nor military feudatories, nor patels, nor village institutions, nor fixed land measures, nor classifications of arable and hill lands, nor that system of meting and weighing the produce, which we now find so generally prevalent, nor lastly, a commutation of the revenue for a money payment. First the king levied his rents, through the intermediate agency of his servants and then, himself: that agency was very limited; the ryots acknowledged the privilege of the usufruct by the payment of a moderate rent, the extent of land was estimated first by the oxen, or ploughs necessary to plough it; then by the quantity of seed requisite to sow it, then by the estimate of its contents, lastly, by actual rude measurement with a rope, or eventually the more correct rod surveys. The villages were at first assessed in separate lots, in kind; then in the whole lot (koomula); lastly, under Mulik Umbur, Todur Mul, Dadajee Kondeo, and Anajee Dhuttoo, by the classified lands, which occasioned the distinction, or first deterioration of Meerassee rights, made such distinctions indispensable, and rendered the appointment of patels and koolkurnees equally so. It made Meeras, or Wutun, as it is called, a desirable property, because it secured or guaranteed the perpetual or conditional usufruct of lands that had been long in cultivation, whether held by ancient or prescriptive right of occupancy, and a priority of claim in remissions, indulgences, and right of citizenship; if I may so express it, before all tenants at will, however designated.

It is not a little remarkable that the same two distinctions occur in all countries: among the Romans there were the Coloni, and the Villici; in the Domes-day book of our own country, there were the mesne lords and villeins, who held, the one, Book, or Bokland, or land which had been registered and confirmed to them: the other Folkland, that is land holden without writing. Lamberd, in his explication of Saxon words (subverbo, *Terra dscriptis*) says that land, in the time of the Saxons, was distinguished by either of the above terms. This Bokland, he says, was held with far better conditions, and by the better sort of tenants, as noblemen and gentlemen, being such as we now call strictly freehold; but the latter was commonly in the possession of clownes, being that which we now call, at the will of the lord. Freehold is sometimes taken in opposition to Villeinage*. When we proceed to the more exact

* Bracton, lib. 4, cap 37, 39.

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definition of freehold and copyhold, or the Bokland and Folkland of the Saxons, or their antetypes the tenures of the Coloni, and Villici of Rome, we perceive a still more striking resemblance to the tenures of India arising out of the same political events, after the Roman empire had arrived at the summit of its power, and had began to dictate laws to the whole of the then known world. As the more interesting and probably the least known to our countrymen in India, of the two, I take the Saxon tenures and the changes which supervened after the Norman conquests. The Gothic nations, and after them, the people of England considered that cultivator *Francalen*, a freeholder, who held his lands for himself and his heirs, without homage, fine, fealty, service, or any acknowledgment to his liege lord, beyond the ancient and proper rent; this patrimonial property was Francalend, or Allodium, in contradistinction to tenure in Villeinage, which is a base tenure, so called because it was holden at the will of the lord, or of him who also rented out the soil, according to the pleasure and at the mercy of the owner: but in the time of the last Roman emperors, the freeholders took example from the precedent then set them of arrogating an absolute property or *plenum dominium* in the soil: as we see *rem dominican* applied in the Roman civil law subsequent to Justinian, to that absolute property which the emperors claimed as holding of no superior, a purely fictitious subterfuge for the benefit of their heirs. So also after Charlemagne's time, *Res Dominici Juris*, or *Domanium*, signified the king's lands in France, appertaining to him in property*. In the like manner it was used in England. "Howbeit we have now here no land (the crowne land only excepted) which holdeth not of a superior. For all depend either mediately or immediately of the crown: that is of some manor or other belonging to the crown, and not granted in fee to any inferior person, therefore no common person lath any demaines simply understood. For when a man in pleading would signify his land to be his own, he saith, that he is, or was seized thereof, in his Demaine, as of feet;" whereby he signifieth that though his land be to him, and his heirs for ever, yet it is not true Demaine, but dependent on a superior lord, and holding by service or rent, in lieu of service, or by both service and rent.

* "Quia Domanium definitur illud, quod nominatim consecratum est, unitum et incorporatum Regiae coronæ." Chopinus de Domanio Franciæ, sect. 2, plegem sequendo 3, cod de bonis vacant. libi. 10, &c.

† Littleton, lib. 1. Cap. 1.

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Hence arose the various constructions of freehold and copyhold property, which we may find fully explained in Bracton. In lib. 2, cap. 9, he says *liberum tenementum*, or freehold, is that land or tenement which a man holdeth in fee tayle, or at the least for term of life. Britton defines it a possession of the soil, or services issuing out of the soil, which a freeman holdeth in fee, to him and his heirs, at least for the term of his life, though the soil be charged with free services or others; copyhold, *Tenura per copium rotuli curie*, Tenure by copy of Court Roll, *Folkland*, came to signify all land for which the tenant had no written grant, or for which he could refer to no other document, but the copy of the rolls made by the steward of his lord's court; against this, it was the duty of the steward, to enter in his books, the tenant's name. Fitzherbert says, the word in question, copyhold, is but a new name; it was land held not simply at the will of the lord, but according to the custom of the manor; so that if a copyholder break not the custom of the manor, and thereby forfeit his tenure, he seemeth not so much to stand at the lord's courtesy, for right, that he may be displaced head over head at his pleasure. These customs of manors are infinite, varying in one point or other, almost in every several manor; first, some copyhold is finable and some certain: that which is finable, the lord rateth at what fine or income he pleaseth, when the tenant is admitted to it: that which is certain, is a kind of inheritance, and called in many places customary, because the tenant dying, and the hold being void, the next of the blood paying the customary fine, so many shillings for an acre, or other fine, may not be denied his admission. Secondly, some copyholders have by custom the wood growing upon their own land, which by law they could not have. Thirdly, copyholders may be such as hold by the *verge*, in ancient demesne, and although they hold by copy, yet are they, in account a kind of freeholders, for they are liable to the same forfeitures, and claim to the same benefits as freeholders. Lastly, there are others, who hold by a common customary tenure, called mere copyholders, who enjoy no such privileges, as any of the foregoing tenants, but may be ejected at the will of the landholder on refusal to pay increased rent, or perform service.

In the foregoing sketch of the Saxon tenures and the changes that supervened, in the construction of Bokland and Folkland, Freehold and Velleinage, we may trace the resemblance of both to the Indian landed tenures from the more perfect and simple form, to the various abuses by which one arrogates a property, as of

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dominium, perfectly independent of all fine, homage, fealty, rent, or service; while another possession is on the true ancient principle of freehold, but its occupant denies his obligation to pay homage. A third possesses a copyhold on the condition of observing the customs of the manor, although considered and treated with, as a freeholder; these three classes are the military zumeendars, or Nankars; second the Meerassees, Wuttundars or Kanyatchikars, who have freehold of the better sort; others having copyhold estates descending from father to son, on fulfilment of the manorial customs. In the Mahratta empire, the zumeendars had their origin in the most turbulent periods of Indian history, and began to be known and dreaded as a powerful body in the early conquests of the Brahmin princes, who style them Kshutriyus, (the military barons.) They again re-appeared in the time of Sheer Shah, but were for a while kept under subjection, not having gained sufficient political strength till the reign of Shah Jehan, from which period they encroached more and more upon the power of the Moghul emperors till with the intervention of foreign invasions, they occasioned the entire subversion of the constitution of this ancient monarchy. The second class subsisted under the first sovereigns, but admitted their tenures and customary obligations whatever they were, whether of service, or fealty, or rent, or homage; but this class in the lapse of ages has been for the most part ejected or ruined, or supplanted by the third, or copyholders, inheriting by the custom of their manors. Holding by such tenure, they have paid the increased land tax of the Brahmins and Moghuls, the policy of which it is by no means my intention to advocate, though the parallel of these and our own national institutions and history will better explain the true nature and origin of the present Meerassee rights, than any exclusive references to Hindu law books, or local customs of particular provinces.

It is not the least important part of this inquiry that it concludes the great body of the better description of landholders under the same unqualified obligation to the state, of some sort; and it will be found that homage is the most essential of these dues. Wheresoever Meeras is not of the nature of ancient freehold, this homage is due, that is, a nuzur or fine on entering upon it, whether in the person of direct, or collateral, heirs: and a greater fine, where Meeras is first conferred, or is sold out of the family: besides which, the consent of the government as a party to the transaction, is in these last cases indispensable. Having examined a great number

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of papers on this curious subject, I believe that all lands held according to the nature of Meeras agree to the Saxon: but the tenant at will, (*Sookwustoo*,) and the greater part of the Wuttundars and Meerasdars of the Mahratta empire, mere copyholders, having nothing to show, but the village rent-roll, the descent of this copyhold property from father to son, is on condition of fulfilling all those obligations and services to the state which after the death of Mulik Umbur were transferred to the village communities.

We now enter upon the description of the land tenures of the Konkun, which are either considered of the nature of Meeras, or Wuttun, that is, hereditary property charged with a fixed *dhara*, or service, and *urdhel*; all the Meeras, or Wuttun of the Konkun is of the nature of the Saxon copyhold, with certain obligations to the lord of the manor above described. Some few obligations are of the nature of service. The principal renters, of the first description are the Gaonkars, the Khotes, Koolkurnees, and Patels; of the second, the Dharakurees, Khutelees, or Koolarug cultivators; the Meerassees and Wuttundars (in this capacity, Wuttundar Khotes, Koolkurnees and Patels have a distinct right for that property, so held, as *Wuttun*), have no true freehold property, according to its first acceptation, though they enjoy certain privileges of freeholders. All that I could learn after the most diligent inquiry with respect to these rights were, that they derived first from the Nizamshahee and Adilshahee kings; some, (a very few,) from the Mahratta government, but that neither Patels, Khotes, Meerassees, Wuttundars, Koolarug or Dharakuree tenants, had any title to property of older date than these princes. By the confusion of the distinct claims or rights of the Khotes, as bound to certain service and homage to the Beejapoor state, and their rights as Wuttundars, a great deal of misunderstanding prevailed when Mr. Dunlop was collector, and not being supported in his recommendations by government, the consequence has been a confirmation of rights over the ryots, which they, the Khotes, had usurped, and an exemption from services and bounden homage which they had very unjustly laid claim to. The particulars I shall state more at length hereafter.

The nature of perfect Meeras appears to be this, that it is saleable, and such property is found to a small extent in the Dukhun, and in Khandesh, though it is very questionable how far the right has been exercised without the consent and privilege of the state. Whether disposed of, or transferred to another, the first possessor was charged with the rent, and such transfer became void unless

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the rule were recognized by all the heirs or claimants, and the officers of government. Such Meeras was liable to sequestration for arrears of rent, till this deed of sale was formally executed before all these parties: without the consent of all heirs and co-partners, it could not be sold; but if all declined to pay the government demands on it, the property reverted to the state, as it *occasionally* did so also, in forfeiture, for treasonable conduct of the individual holder. The nature of the *wuttun* or *meeras* of the whole Konkun is an assignment for service or lease for rent, hereditary, unalienable, unsaleable, but for life or a term of years, though it is frequently mortgaged for the term of the possessor's life, and has been even sold, though contrary to all acknowledged custom. It does not appear that the consent of heirs is necessary to such deed, though it has frequently occasioned the ejectment of the lawful heir either from his neglecting to resume his property, through the greater cunning, or actual occupancy of the person to whom it was mortgaged, or the collusion of the Mahratta government and its revenue officers. The Khotes appear to have been officers appointed by the Beejapoor government, and to have had no existence before that time; their tenure prescribed certain service, and entitled them to several privileges and exemptions: having great power in their hands they have gradually dispossessed all classes; the true Meerasdars of their hereditary lands, as well as the Hindu officers, the Desaees, and Deshpandees of their plunder and usurped acquisitions, and annihilated in many palpable instances the humble but useful tenantry which was put in operation by the same government at the same time.

The first introduction of the Khotes, as I have learnt from an ancient inscription, and many kowls, or grants for the occupation of new land, was in the year of our Lord 1502, when Mustapha Khan was deputed by Ali Adil Shah, first king of Beejapoor to administer the affairs of the Soobahdaree of Dhabol, extending from the Savitree river to the Gurnyee river, the southern boundary of Salsee. In many of the kowls, the Desaees, Koolkurnees, and Deshpandees, about that period, are confirmed in their *Wuttuns*, from which it is to be supposed that these offices had been some time in existence, although they were merely looked upon as agents or poligars, who had usurped certain privileges which, for the better realization of the revenue, and in view to the conciliation of this troublesome but useful class of revenue agents, the Beejapoor government thought it necessary to enter into such recognizances. In

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these documents it runs thus:—Such and such person, Desaee, or
whatever it might be, having accepted the offers of government
and notified all his just claims, is confirmed in his *Wuttun*. Beyond
the above limits there is no account of any Khots, though some
Mahomedans, boldly presuming upon the supposed ignorance of
the collector and his servants, have set up some absurd claims to this
title; arguing that *Khot* means farmer, which in strictness it does,
and that as they had the farms of villages from the Peshwa's farmers,
or contractors, they had a claim over the ryots of their villages
equal to the *Khots* of the old Soobahdaree of Dhabol. From their
interpretation it was concluded by some of the Revenue assistants,
that the Khots of Beejapoor were also to be reckoned as mere farmers,
a very dangerous and foolish concession, which favored the pretext
for the continuance of the farming system. Mr. Duncan in his report
on the Island of Salsette, remarks that no patels were known in the
Portuguese territory before the time of Kundojee Mankur, nor is there
any reason to believe that an office, of so important and extensive
use in the present revenue system, could have been overlooked in
the Hindu or Mahomedan books, had it had any real existence
before the time of the Brahminical code being published, or the
fiscal regulations of Akbar, and Mulik Umbur. With the latter
prince it began to assume a characteristic and settled form. It is
to be presumed therefore, that the Khot was another word for
Patel, his office intended for the same express objects, to conciliate
and superintend the ryots, to assist the government in the collection
of the revenues, and by what the Mahrattas call, *soundul*, a system
of distribution, apportion also the demands of government, or
losses by calamitous seasons, or events, to all the ryots in strict
relation to their circumstances, necessities, and lands.

In the abstract there are, therefore, three descriptions of land
tenure, 1st. That of the Khots, Patels, Gaonkurs, and village
or district officers, charged with service; the true lineal descendants
of those first appointed by the Moghuls. 2nd. That of Khutelees,
Koolarug, Dharakuree, or Meerasdars, the true lineal descendants
or heirs of the original copyhold proprietors, which, as well as those
of the former classes, were first introduced by the Beejapoor, and
Nizamshahee princes and called Wuttundars: 3rd. Urdhelees, tenants
at will, mere copyholders, as described in the foregoing sketch of
Saxon tenures, the same as the *villici* of the Romans, and the Ceorles
of the Saxons. There are, it is to be observed, many Khots,
Patels, Gaonkurs and other village and district officers charged

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with services, as holding on an inferior description of tenure, by
grants on escheats, or mortgaged property lapsing to the state by
default, or non-appearance of heirs, and this is burthened with the
very same obligations as the true tenure, and is hereditary meeras,
(or *mouroosee*, Arabic) as the occupants term it, but it is neither
considered so valuable by the occupants, nor the natives in general,
nor was it so esteemed by the native governments. The reason is
to be found in the characteristic timidity or superstitious reverence
of the natives to the received tenures of the land. Nothing is
supposed by the Hindus to entail so great and grievous a curse as
the unjust seizure of land, or its alienation from the first lineal heirs
of the occupant. It was always customary therefore with the native
princes, even the most reckless and unprincipled of them, Bajee
Rao, the late Peshwa, to constitute all persons to such lapsed
Meerasee property, or *wuttun*, whether Meeras in the highest degree,
or Meeras as it has been above described to subsist in the Konkun,
with infinite reservation to the heirs, should any such turn up here-
after; or to their submitting to the terms required of them by those
who held their property in mortgage, or on their behalf.

Upon the same principle the Khutelee or Dharakuree, or Meeras-
see, who neither held his property by descent, nor investiture from the
Mahomedan governments of the Dukhun, was considered inferior to
the proprietor who derived his claims from the first copyhold pro-
prietor by descent: there are therefore a great many of the two
first classes of persons, Khots, Patels, Dharakurees, &c. who are
not wuttundars, nor have any such privileges, yet subject to limitations
of recognition, the dues of services, rent, &c. which were obligatory
on the hereditary cultivator, or wuttundars, being, in a far stronger
degree, binding on those holding by the less ancient title. It might
be said therefore, throughout the whole Mahratta empire, whether
in the Dukhun or Konkun, there were strictly but three kinds of
tenure, true merass, originating with the ancient monarchs of
India; Meeras originating with the Nizamshahee and Beejapoor
governments, entitled *wuttun*, either for service or rent: Third;
Doolandee, oopree, or urdhelee tenure, originating with the late
oppressive taxation and civil dissension or wars of the Mahrattas; to
which in after times were superadded the subordinate distinctions of
the first and second tenure, which was Meeras of inferior value,
both as to antiquity, title and acknowledged right. The only kind of
hereditary property to be found in the Konkun was that which came
under the second head, and its two distinctions; all other cultivators
are mere tenants at will.

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To recapitulate the whole in the most explicit terms. Such tenures of land throughout the entire Konkun were of these three kinds: first that derived immediately from the state, which therefore was responsible to it, or to its officers, for the service or revenue with which it was originally chargeable; this was, and still continues to be hereditary, (mouroosee or wuttun*) frequently mortgaged, and has also been thrown up, though it is not saleable without the general consent of the family and heirs, and not out of the family, without the consent of the ruling power: it is not liable to other service, or strictly speaking, to other exactions of any kind, belonging exclusively to the members of that family, Kool or household, in whom it was first vested. The tenure of meeras is inferior only to that ancient and most valuable description of property now known throughout Peninsular India, which doubtless originated with the kings of Beejapoor and Ahmednuggur; a second also, though called Meeras, because hereditary, is certainly not strictly such, nor accounted wuttun or patrimonial inheritance, being neither saleable, nor transferable, though it is frequently mortgaged: still subject in every sense, to restitution to the heirs of the first proprietor, and ad interim charged with every claim of service or rent: it derived also from the state, but at periods subsequent to the first settlement and appropriation of the land, either from meerassee lands which had lapsed to the sovereign by the extinction of the families of their first occupants, by escheats on the subversion of former dynasties, or new assignments on wastes, conferred on new proprietors. In some places near the coast this last is called Silotur, and is more frequent about Sanksee, Salsette, and the north Konkun. This description of Meeras, however, not having the sanction of antiquity, and being subject to many written recognitions to the state in all cases of descent, was less valuable, and therefore under the Mahratta government not unfrequently relinquished. Instances are also on record of this description of Meerasdars being ousted for others, on payment of a larger peshkush or acknowledgment: though it was no doubt considered a grievous injustice by the parties thus displaced, notwithstanding the power so exercised was never disallowed, nor questioned, under former governments. The term meeras being indiscriminately used for both tenures; first, as coming from the state, next as restricted in the abstract to hereditary succession,

* The natives have a proverb regarding the sacred right of land or property of this nature, derived from their fathers by descent, "Hoob ool wuttun mi ool eeman," Arab. The love of one's patrimonial property is an article of faith.

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has occasioned much perplexity in the discussions which have been instituted from time to time at the desire of the British government, for the better discovery and understanding of the existing claims of the cultivators of the soil. The escheating of meeras by the sovereign, cannot be considered as countervailing the true original and indefeasible right of the heirs of the first occupant or possessor, but as a mulct or forfeiture analogous in some degree to that consequent on felony, or high treason, the former of which, not coming under the cognizance of native governments, never was, and the latter but very rarely, visited on the household, or Kool, collectively, either, according to Hindu or Mahomedan law. Under the first description of meeras, were the estates, or it might be offices, conferred on the original partition and settlement of the country; under the second, the grants to such Khotee offices and Koolarug farms, which had lapsed to the state by default of heirs. The wuttun of the Khots originated altogether with the Beejapoor kings, on whom it was conferred when no such tenure existed in the district of the Konkun subject to that state; the meeras of the Koolarugee cultivator by the officers of that state, under the system of Chowk Charee; that is, a community of independent freeholders, collectively answerable to the state for their Dhara, or revenue, with obligations differing only in kind from those affecting the Khots. So much were these tenures respected, that neither Seevajee, nor his son Sumbhajee, ventured on the conquest of the country, nor indeed in their subsequent revenue management to infringe, or in any way disturb, the occupancy or title of those in whom they found them vested at that period; nor did the Peshwas deviate from this same policy with respect to the country in any of the districts from the Veeturunee river to the Punch muhal of Phonda southward; throughout which, therefore, we find this description of tenures in full operation at the time the country came under the British dominions, part in 1812, the rest in 1818-19. Owing to the disturbed state of the country, and the oppressive measures of the Mahrattas, to frequent famines, pestilences, and droughts, many estates have passed from the families of their original proprietors into the hands of Brahmins, Mahomedans, and some few also have reverted to the Mahratta government, chiefly during the operation of the farming system.

The transfer of the first kind of meeras, which for the sake of perspicuity and distinction we may properly term alienable, as the latter is unalienable by its proprietors, would take place to a far greater extent in the small than great estates: accordingly, we

80

find few of these small estates in the hands of the reputed original
families to whom they were first assigned, being for the most part
Shoodras, or Mahomedans who have superseded the original pro-
priets; and such abandonment is the most remarkable proof that
the heavy assessments have ruined the small landholders, who were
unable to withstand the constant demands against them, yet by hold-
ing to their patrimonial estates till they were compelled to relinquish
them by actual ruin, they have involved their fields and their govern-
ment in the same calamity. The hereditary Khots, having larger
capital, and the resources of the whole villages, at command, have
withstood such demands or risen above their difficulties, and are
yet more numerous, in comparison, than the Koolarug, or Dhara-
kuree, cultivators.

The third description of tenure is that of the *urdhel*, or tenants at will, to whom the land was either leased on *oolthe*, *istawa*, or *kowl*, sometimes on a mere *ookhtee*, or verbal agreement: the first and last description of indefinite lease prevails in all the woody and mountainous tracts from Jowar, to the last and dreary retreats of the Koolees, Bheels, and Ramoosees on the Suhyadree mountains to the southward; being confined by the former governments, principally to such lands, as were not recovered or brought into the general partition, when the Hindus and Mahomedans of the Dukhun first established a systematic measure of land revenue throughout Maharashtra: the *oolthe* was a conditional power, allowed of moving year after year, from one field to another, as it was more favorable to cultivation, or as it required a rest, or natural fallow, and perhaps even of alternating the grains cultivated: the second was from a rough estimate of the produce in kind, the seed required to sow a certain tract, or the quantity of land that could be managed by the cattle and ploughs of the cultivator, which was, and had been usually fixed by verbal agreement of the landlord, whether the sovereign, his servant, or any dependent farmer; and these two appear on strict inquiry to have been the most ancient tenures known throughout this, as all other parts of India. They appear to have long preceded every other, and were in full operation at the time of Todur Mul's, Mulik Umbur's, Suffee Khan's, Moorshed Khan's and Dadajee Kondeo's settlements, when they were displaced by the rod measurement.

Having thus fully explained the original and present state of the
land tenures, and the principle of the rent, revenue, or service,
attaching to each, we may now consider the land as assessed in the

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first instance with its rent in kind, the customary practice of the
Hindus before the 16th century. The whole Konkun was anciently
subject to the Deoghur princes: in the 12th century the districts
south of the Savitree river were overrun by Poligars*, or chiefs, ac-
knowledging some sort of submission to the Anagoondee princes of
Kurnata. The northern districts fell under the dominion of the
Bahmunee kings of the Dukhun, who for a short time recovered
also the southern districts; but these soon reverted to the Poligars
of Chakun, Jooneer, Rayree, Punnala, Koodal, and Soonda; on the
fall of Anagoondee, and the establishment of the Beejapoor govern-
ment, the southern districts of the Konkun fell under the power of
that state, those north of the Savitree river continued in the hands
of the Koolee chiefs, till they were dispossessed by Mulik Umbur,
who then held the government of Dowlutabad, and Jooneer, for
Mahmood Shah Bahmunee. The first settlement of the country
took place throughout the northern and southern districts, about
a century before Mulik Umbur's improved assessment was intro-
duced. In the Ahmednuggur, Konkun, it was called *Dhemp*; in the
Dhabol Soobah, *Dhara*; and in the Koodal prant†, *Koomula*. At first
it had reference simply to the rice cultivation, and that by the *aslah*,
or rope measurement: the *bhurrur*, or *wurkus*, hill land, being
estimated by the *hul*, or *nangur*, that is, the plough, as it is also

* The word Poligar appears to have been anciently used for a freebooter; and *phond poligar*, one who lived on black mail. As the weakness of the empire increased, and the terror inspired by the insurgent feudatories and marauding chiefs extended over the south of India, it came to be applied to all who had set up for themselves, whether from choice or absolute necessity. The most northern Poligar chief, now in existence, is the Dessae of Sawunt Warree. Those of Jooneer and Punala were reduced by Sevajee, but Chundur Row Moria of the latter place, is still familiarly spoken of as a brave and great man, whose government was conducted with prudence and justice, as well as vigour. The reader will of course consider all such commendatory statements to be made with reference to the then existing state of knowledge, and religion.—The poligars of southern India, occupy a very prominent station in the animated contests, between the first British adventurers and the native powers, so elegantly described by Orme, one of the ablest of our Historians.

† Prant as we have elsewhere shewn was an ancient Hindu term, signifying a considerable subdivision of a country,—answering to a county; some two, three, or more of which, constituting what was afterwards designated a soobah or viceregal government—so that of Wussyee, Kulian, Kurnata, Chewul, and Rajpooree constituted the Tul Konkun subject to Deoghur, or Aurungabad, extending from the Damungunga river to the Savitree river in lat. 18° N. The prants of Dhabol, Rajapoor and Koodal comprehended all the southern districts of the Konkun subject to the Anagoondee, subsequently to the Beejapoor viceregal government, extending from the Savitree to the Gungaolee river, lat 14° 30' N.

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now: this *dhemp*, *dhara*, or *koomula*, was fixed with reference to the seed required to sow the land, and was very light; however uncertain, both as to the measure of the land, and the measure of the produce; it is generally believed to have been rated at one-sixth of the gross produce, the remaining sixth, for the service and officers of religion and charity, not being taken into the account, nor regularly defined, before that period, as we have stated at the commencement of this essay: the government share of the produce was a tenth only. Mulik Umbur's assessment contemplated the more correct knowledge of the extent of arabic land by the rod survey; the Beejapoor government still followed the old practice of the *dhara*, and *koomula*, ascertained by Nuzur pahanee, or ocular survey, in which condition it continued till the time of Dadajee Kondeo. During the life of Sumbhajee, the son and successor of Seevajee, Anajee Dhuttoo made the first regular survey and assessment of the Dhabol Soobha, when the Dhara was fixed by Beegaonee; or in other words, the produce of a Beegah ( = 4014 square yards) of each kind of land, regulated the government share.

It is the general belief of some respectable aged zumeendars, that at the time of the first ascertainment of the *dhemp*, *dhara*, or *koomula*, the whole of the cultivators were treated with, as Meerasdars or Dharakurees of one description; all the villages being *Koolarug*, and assessed according to one uniform standard. From the strictest enquiry I have little doubt of this account, and that there was then no such thing as the *Urdhelee's* or *Badhekuree's* tenure. This arose out of the vicious system of the Mahrattas, and is the true fruit of that ambiguity and laxity of principle inculcated by the Hindu law books. It is not impossible that this tenure may have grown out of the abuses of former Hindu government; however that may have been, most of the vexatious practices of the Hindus, extra cesses, and tenures of various kinds, gave place to the more simple, uniform and just condition, above described, of mutual acknowledgment; the ryot on his part discharging his rent, the government leaving the ryot in undisturbed possession of his field. Hence, undisturbed possession grew up in a very short time into the fixed nature of an hereditary patrimony, (*wuttun*) or *meeras*, of which nothing, but the extreme of injustice, oppression, and violence could deprive them.

Having received from nine-tenths of the hereditary village officers, an account of their origin, and the probable date of their ancestors' first institution to office, or property, as far as they them-

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selves could ascertain it, I have ventured to speak the more positively, being assured that nothing is now wanting to a perfect understanding of the rights of this once powerful, but troublesome class of landholders. If we can but distinguish between the first and highest kind of property throughout the Konkun, and that acquired by more recent grants, by mortgages, default of heirs, or relinquishment of patrimony, we can be at no loss to pronounce what obligations are strictly binding on the several parties; moreover, we should labour under no difficulty in determining what right the government have to assess, or require service of the cultivator: and in this view again, it is difficult to say how speedily we might see the entire population raised from poverty, gross ignorance, and bondage, to a state of comparative moral and civil efficiency. Such was the unsettled and impoverished condition of the Konkun in the year 1502, for which the Nizamshahee and Beejapoor kings proposed a remedy, by inviting back or encouraging all the landholders to return to their homes, and re-occupy on the simple acknowledgment of a light rent, part payable in money, but chiefly in kind, at the commutation rate of the bazars of the season; for which, and obedience to the government officers, they were continued in undisturbed possession of the fields they then cultivated, with reservation of their claims to their heirs according to Mahomedan or Hindu law. By the former females are admitted to a share, by the latter never. There was then no sayer, but the duties on trade, and the various charges of the revenue officers for the house expences: the Revenue was collected by the Koolkurnee, that is, accountants*, and brought by their several subordinate agents to the government treasury, whence it was re-issued to the troops and servants on the spot, or in neighbouring districts, and so was almost immediately circulated within the very range of its collection. In the sequel, a more exact account was taken of the lands and produce, and the average bazar rates by which it was commuted.

Joseph's levy in Egypt, had been from a fourteen years' trial, the criterion of the extremes, of plenty and want. Akbar's was from a trial of ten, or nineteen, years. Mulik Umbur's, was from a five, or as others relate, a three years' trial: this was called Behera; the same was observed in after times by the Peshwas, though it must have undergone modifications from the influx of American

* Derived from کول, kool, Arabic, all; وقرن kurn, Arabic, to account, in other words جمee, jumee, to add one to another.

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