34 ASSESSMENT UPON THE INDIVIDUAL. LECTURE Assessment vidual cultiva tor. with the cultivators, the assessment would still follow the established usages, and would become an assessment upon the indi- of the individual through the headman of the village, and with reference to the position of the individual in the village. As early as the time of Menu, the individual appears to have been recognised in connexion with the revenue. On this subject the following extract from the Fifth Report is deserving of attention:-"It is represented by the Board of Revenue, in their report in favour of the village system of rent, that it was at least as old as the age of Menu; but if by this be meant that such a mode of settlement was in conformity to the general and settled practice of the Hindoo Governments, the fact appears to be at variance with such information as the Committee have been able to collect in their enquiries upon that subject. The usual course pursued by them for the realization of their territorial revenue appears to have been to collect it from those having an interest in the cultivation of the soil, either in proprietary right or as tenants, through the medium of their own officers. They may have farmed out the revenues of a whole village or more to the head inhabitants on terms of specific contract; but when this occurred this Committee believe it to have been a deviation from the general rule. In the latter periods of the Mahomedan dominion the system of farming the revenues by degrees came into very general use; and to this, it is believed, may be traced the origin of most of the zemindars in the Bengal provinces and in the Northern Circars. They were, as it is now pretty clearly ascertained, in general no other than the revenue servants of districts or sub-divisions of a province; who, as the Committee have formerly explained, were obliged by the conditions on. which they held their office to account for the collections they made, or the share of the crop they received from the ryots, to the governing power in whose service they were employed; and for which service they were in the enjoyment of certain remuneratory advantages, regulated on the principle of a percentage or commission on the revenues within the limits of their local charge; but having, in the process of time and during periods of revolution or of weakness in the sovereign authority, acquired an influence and ascendancy which it was difficult to keep within the confines of official duty, it was found convenient to treat with them as contractors for the revenues of their respective districts; that is, they were allowed, on stipulating to pay the State a certain sum for such advantage for a given period, to appropriate the revenues to their own use and profit: the amount of the sum for which they engaged depended on the relative strength or weakness of the parties; the ability of the government to enforce or of the zemindar to resist. In this situation of things, the practice of sub-renting naturally ensued; and the detail of the farming system would extend itself to several villages. In the Carnatic territory, where large tracts were leased by the Nabob Mahomed Ally to individuals for a greater or lesser number of years under engagements entered into at the seat of his residency, it was found, on that territory being annexed to the British possessions, that the revenues of each village were generally sub-rented to the potails. But in the districts ceded by the Nizam, and in the Mysore country, which also passed from the rule of Mahomedan Princes to that of the East India Company, sub-renting by villages was by no means universal; though it existed to a considerable extent. Whole districts were still under ryot LECTURE LECTURE I. Headman long recognised. The putwarry and canoongoe. 36 THE PUTWARRY AND CANOONGOE. war rents; rents not farmed to the potails of villages, but which were collected by the potails in the name and for the use of Government, in their natural and constitutional character, as the agents or superintendents of the villages to which they belonged, agreeably to the ancient practice of the Hindoos; and as your Committee may add, according to the institutions of their native rulers; for, according to those institutions as they have been explained in a foregoing part of this Report, the potail, in the character abovementioned, and also the curnum or village accountant, has, from the earliest times, been in the possession of a rent-free portion of land, and in the enjoyment of regular and established perquisites attached to their offices." I shall dwell upon the growth of the zemindars, which is referred to in the above passage when I come to deal with the Mahomedan period. The headmen retained their position under Hindoo rule; but the Mahomedans ejected many of them, giving them however an allowance. Even under British rule the settlements were made and revenue collected through the headman as we have seen; this was also done in the Havellies, and substantially the same course was followed in the jageer.3 There are two other officers whose functions are important, both in connexion with the village and the general administration of the revenue, the putwarry, or village registrar and accountant, and the canoongoe or pergunnah registrar; but, as these offices were not superseded during the Mahomedan rule to the same extent as the headman's, 'Fifth Report, Vol. II, 113, 114. 2 Land Tenure by a Civilian, 60, 61. LECTURE The zemindar. I shall give some account of them in describing the Mahomedan land system. Again there were the rudiments of the zemindar in the Hindoo system; but this too will be more conveniently dealt with in the Mahomedan system. It remains to notice the machinery for revenue collection above the headman. The officer to whom the headmen paid the revenue, when they paid it direct, was the fiscal head of the pergunnah or bisi, a division consisting of a number of villages (gaong or gram = mouzah). He was called a Chowdhry, Bissoi, Khand-adipati or Desmookh; The chowdhry. and, with the assistance of a military force of khandaits or pykes under a military commander, preserved the peace and collected the revenue of the pergunnah and transmitted it to the treasury. He retained ten per cent. of the collections as his remuneration; but was frequently paid by an assignment of the revenue of a certain portion of land. Such assignments are known as jageers. The zemindars of Mahomedan times grew in many cases out of the Hindoo chowdhries.* The king's share, with the collection of which the Chow- The amount of the king's dhry was ultimately charged, was generally paid in kind, but share. sometimes in money, especially in the case of garden ground." As we have seen this share theoretically varied from one-eighth to one-twelfth, and might be as much as one-fourth. With regard to the proportion taken in practice, there is consider Patton's Asiatic Monarchies, 166. Fifth Report, Vol. II, 7. 2 Patton's Asiatic Monarchies, 79. Orissa, Vol. II, 216. Patton's Asiatic Monarchies, 81. Fifth Report, Vol. II, 7. Land Tenure by a Civilian, 21. Fifth Report, Vol. II, 8, 9, 41, 59. Great Rent Case, B. L. R., Sup. Vol., 209. Land Tenure by a Civilian, 128. LECTURE I. 38 ACTUAL AMOUNT OF REVENUE. able difference of opinion. Sir George Campbell says the king took from one-tenth to one-eighth of the gross produce.1 Mr. Shore and other authorities say one-sixth others again say something less than one-fourth of the gross produce :3 and Sir Thomas Munro puts it as high as from two-fifths to three-fifths. Again it is said the cultivator got half the paddy produce, or grain in the husk, and two-thirds of the dry grain crop watered by artificial means; this was after all deductions for village officers were made,—the net crop.5 The assessment remained almost fixed; in Canara it is said to have remained fixed for two centuries and a half, and not to have increased more than ten per cent. during another half century. And in Bijanuggur, the Rajah Hurryhur Roy, between 1334 and 1347, made a new assessment of Canara professedly on the principles of the shasters. This scheme assumed the produce to be twelve times the seed, and therefore that 24 katties of seed produced 30 katties of paddy, which was thus divided: to the State, 71⁄2 katties or one-fourth; to the cultivator, 15 katties or half; and to the zemindar, 7 katties or one-fourth. The State share was again sub-divided so as to leave the State 5 katties or one-sixth, the dewustan or religious endowments 1 kattie, and the Brahmins or Bremhaday 1 katties. The cultivator, according to this scheme, got half and the State only one-sixth; and another account says that up to the middle of the fourteenth century, ' Campbell's Cobden Club Essay, 155. See Orissa, Vol. I, 32 to 35. 2 Harington's Analysis, Vol. III, 230. Ayeen Akbery, Vol. I, 347, 348. Whinfield's Landlord and Tenant, 74, note (a). Hiouen Thsang in Elphinstone's History of India, 5th Edition, p. 298. Fifth Report, Vol. II, 79, 83, 456. Robinson's Land Revenue, 17. Orissa, Vol. II, 166. 5 Fifth Report, Vol. II, 8. Fifth Report, Vol. II, 79, 83, 456. |