THE JAGEER. 191 the arrears of revenue, and the Government recognised the transfer upon payment into the treasury of the amount of arrears. Otherwise, the canoongoe refused to record the transaction, and the Government to give effect to it.1 LECTURE VI. the revenue. We have now traced the revenue up to the point of its Application of payment into the treasury. That revenue was then applied to the purposes of the State. The class which was to be maintained out of the revenue was called in Mahomedan law ahl, or "the people of khiraj." It consisted of the great officers of State, the civil and military establishments, and the officers of Government generally. These might be provided for in two ways; either by paying them in money out of the Exchequer, that is, by applying the khiraj for that purpose after its receipt; or by allowing them to receive a certain portion of the khiraj, either from the Government officers, the zemindars, or the ryots. When the khiraj was thus allowed to be intercepted Jageers. before its receipt into the treasury, the right so to intercept it was called a jageer. This is the general term, although as we shall see there were several varieties which bore specific names. We have already met with the term jageer as applied to one great division of the assessed land of the empire: the jageer lands which did not pay revenue into the treasury, or only paid part of it, were those from which the jageerdar himself collected either directly or through the established machinery. We have noticed the origin of these jageers in the necessity for supporting local military forces, and in the policy of allowing them to enforce the collection of the revenue 1 Orissa, Vol. II, 237. Fifth Report, Vol. I, 631. LECTURE Lakhiraj. Milk. by which they were to be supported. These jageer lands are sometimes called lakhiraj or free from revenue: but this is not, according to the description just given, a strictly correct term. As far as payment into the treasury is concerned, they are lakhiraj to the extent to which they are appropriated in jageers, that is, they are lakhiraj as opposed to khalsa lands. But they do pay revenue; only they pay so much as has been assigned in jageer, not into the treasury, but to the jageerdar. The revenue is alienated, not extinguished.' It is important to bear this in mind because lakhiraj land is not, or at any rate was not originally, land with the quality of being free from revenue, but land bound to pay to an assignee of the State; it is not an exemption of the land, but the right of the jageerdar, which is contemplated in the grant. It might happen that the person who was to be provided for out of the revenue was himself in occupation of land yielding revenue; as in the case of the headman, the village officers, the zemindar, and others. In such a case an obvious mode of making the required provision was by remitting the whole or a portion of the revenue due from the land occupied by the person to be provided for; and this was sometimes done. The grantee in such a case would, during the continuance of the grant, enjoy the double right to occupy and to receive the revenue; and the only interest contemplated as remaining in any other person would be the right to receive revenue after the termination of the grant. This therefore came nearer to an absolute right than any of the rights we have at 'Baillie's Land Tax, xxvi. Land Tenure by a Civilian, 89. present met with. A grant of this kind was called millik or milk (property).1 LECTURE assigning ancient. The practice of assigning revenue for the support of the Practice of Government establishments arose apparently in very early revenue very times and existed in the case of the headman and for religious purposes even in Hindoo times. Thus we find in the travels of Hiouen Thsang, a Buddhist, who visited India in the seventh century, that the produce of the royal lands, which corresponds to the revenue, and probably is spoken of as land under a misconception, was divided into four portions. The first portion went to defray the expenses of the kingdom, the second to supply jageers for officers of State, the third was given to learned men, and the fourth to Buddhists and Brahmins. In Mahomedan times we find mention of jageers between A.D. 1211 and 1236 in the time of Shums-ood-deen. The practice of making such grants was discontinued Growth of jageers. by Ala-ood-deen; but was revived by Sultan Feroze in 1351, who made extensive temporary grants of this sort, called originally nanha or bread, and afterwards jageers.3 These jageers were of a somewhat feudal character: they were generally granted on condition of service; and the original name of them brings to mind the feudal lord, who was so called because he supplied his followers with bread. After Sultan Feroze's time the practice of making such grants still continued; since, although some 'Baillie's Land Tax, xlviii. Land Tenure by a Civilian, 55, 56, 89. Evidence of Mr. Newnham before the Select Committee of the House of Commons (1832), 2754. 2 Elphinstone's History of India, 298. Baillie's Land Tax, xliv. Freeman's Growth of the English Constitution, 47. LECTURE These grants usually of revenue and not of land. what a departure from the principle of centralisation, it was recommended by its great immediate convenience. And by the time of Jaffier Khan a considerable portion of the revenue of Bengal had been thus assigned. Jaffier Khan resumed many of these assignments granting others in Orissa. In this he imitated the policy of Akbar, who directed that the jageers should be frequently changed to prevent the troops establishing themselves in any one place.1 The creation of the new jageers however did not get rid of this danger, for we find that many of the holders of them afterwards revolted. After Jaffier Khan, Cossim Ali followed, in this as in other respects, the same policy, resuming many jageers and compelling the holders of others to account for the surplus revenue withheld by them.3 Grants of revenue or of land free from revenue were made for various purposes, such as past services; for services to be rendered during the term of the grant; as a provision for the great officers of State or needy persons of high rank; for charitable purposes; for the maintenance of temples, mosques, teachers, priests, and for other religious purposes. Such grants did not in general alienate the revenue in perpetuity. The sovereign indeed could not, according to Mahomedan ideas, permanently alienate the revenue: and therefore, when it was intended that the grant should extend beyond the lifetime of the sovereign granting it, the grant generally contained an appeal to his 'Stewart's History of Bengal, 107. Harington's Analysis, Vol. II, 66. 3 Fifth Report, Vol. I, 294, 296, 306, 307 to 309. Morley's Digest, Vol. I, 401. Fifth Report, Vol. II, 14. Baillie's Land Tax, xxiv to xxvi. successors to continue it.' And all alienations of revenue were registered in the tun-dufter at Delhi, and were revised at the beginning of a new reign; when the grants were either confirmed or resumed at the will of the new sovereign. These grants ordinarily only transferred the revenue and not the land: although in some cases land appears to have been also granted, as in some milk and muddud-mash grants, as also in some altumgha grants: but in such cases it was probably land at the disposition of the State as being waste or deserted land, or perhaps frontier land from which the holders had been ejected. At any rate we cannot find any instance in which the ryots were ejected in order to put the grantee in possession of the land itself: and if the cultivators remained in possession under the same right as before, they would of course still continue to pay revenue; only to the jageerdar instead of to the State. It is expressly stated that the Emperor purchases land when he requires it for building a mosque; one of the few purposes, it may be observed, for which the land itself would be required. And a grant for purposes of this kind comes under the head of muddud-mash grants; the grantees of which, like the holders of milk, were usually entitled to the land, as well as to the revenue. If the grantee under these grants was already the occupant of the land, the grant 1 Baillie's Land Tax, li. 2 Land Tenure by a Civilian, 57, 89. 3 Harington's Analysis, Vol. III, 329, 369. Steele's Deccan Castes, 206. Land Tenure by a Civilian, 90. Directions for Revenue Officers, 59. Harington's Analysis, Vol. III, 328. Some of the grants of the Hindoo rulers, which have been discovered, and which were inscribed on copper plates, are however in very absolute terins. See Colebrooke's Essays (London: Trübner and Co., 1873), Vol. III, Nos. xi and xii. LECTURE VI. |