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India, preserving their ancient organisation in many LECTURE respects. Those in the south of India, where Mahomedan rule was less complete, are amongst the nearest to what is believed to be their ancient form. These communities have also been found in a flourishing condition in the Delhi territory, and in the North-Western Provinces generally :3 but Sir George Campbell considers the Punjab villages to be the most perfect specimens, and those of the south of India to be a comparatively decayed type.*

lands and

These communities inhabited the village homesteads, The village which were collected together, and cultivated the village homesteads. lands, some of which were detached and at a considerable distance. There was also a certain amount of waste or uncultivated land included in the village lands.5 The waste is however considered by some to belong to the State, but probably the question is only a branch of the general controversy as to the proprietary right. It is sufficient for our present purpose that they were included within the village boundaries. In some cases part of the

Fifth Report, Vol. II, p. 86. The Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords (1830) in the evidence of Colonel Briggs, 4137.

Selections from Government Records of the N. W. Provinces (Mr. Thomason's Despatches), Vol. I, 80, 86, 147, 447, 448. I shall refer to this work in future as Thomason's Selections. Select Committee of the House of Commons (1832), Mr. Fortescue's Evidence, 2230.

Directions for Revenue Officers in the N. W. Provinces (Calcutta, 1858), p. 8.

See his Essay on Indian Land Tenures in the Cobden Club Essays. 1st Series (Macmillan and Co., London, 1870), 2nd Edition, pp. 160. See Rustic Bengal by J. B. P. in the Calcutta Review for 1874.

Land Tenure by a Civilian (Calcutta: Samuel Smith & Co., 1832), pp. 7, 21. Fifth Report, Vol. II, 571. Orissa, by W. W. Hunter (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1872), Vol. II, p. 206. Thomason's Selections, 83, 84. "Colonel Briggs's Evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Lords (1830), 4137, 4140.

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LECTURE village lands was separated from the rest by intervening land of another village,1 and the villages were not always locally compact, but their boundaries scarcely ever varied.2

A self-governing corporation.

The development from the

The Hindoo village community was a little republic or corporation3 which was almost self-governing. The Hindoo village had a non-Aryan predecessor in Orissa in the Kandh hamlet, but that wanted the corporate life of its successor, and was merely a collection of families.*

The Hindoo village appears to have grown out of the joint-family. joint-family, the unit of Hindoo society. The Hindoo race seems to have colonised as well as conquered the country, and the joint-family with its developments to have gradually formed a village. This is shown by the fact that all these village communities preserve a tradition of descent from a common ancestor who founded the village. would account for the corporate life and unity which the Kandh hamlet lacked.

This

The same feature of common descent also characterised the agrarian communities of France in their primitive form.7 And we can follow the process of expansion from a family into a community in the Slave villages described by M. de Laveleye. Again new villages would probably be

1 Directions for Revenue Officers, 31.

2 Fifth Report, Vol. II, 571.

3 Ib., 575. Orissa, Vol. II, 206. Maine's Village Communities (London: Murray, 1871), 175. Directions for Revenue Officers, 50.

4 Orissa, Vol. II, 208 to 210.

5 Maine's Village Communities, 175. Campbell's Cobden Club Essay, 161. Fifth Report, Vol. II, 628. Evidence of Mr. Fortescue before the Select Committee of the House of Lords (1830), 509.

So at the present day villagers commonly describe their fellow vil lagers as brothers, although apparently not related in any way. 7 Revue des Deux Mondes, tome 101, pp. 54, 55.

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formed in the same way by offshoots from the original stock, LECTURE and thus the work of colonisation would be continued.

I.

first held in

divided at an

The village lands appear to have been at first held in The lands at common by the families composing the community as in common but the Russian mir;' and there are traces of the periodical early period. re-distribution of the land which is a characteristic of European communities of the same kind. At some period of their existence however a further development took place, when a division appears to have been made of the cultivated lands into equal shares, probably amongst the then existing families; and this division must have taken place at an early stage, as the number of shares is generally small. The original shares continued thenceforth to be preserved as the primary divisions of the village,3 and the subsequent sub-divisions were into fractions of such shares. Thus the

2

Punjab villages are divided into a certain number of ploughlands, which are distributed amongst the cultivators.*

These communities appear also to have attracted to Immigrants. themselves certain extraneous elements which they assimilated more or less completely. These were immigrants who either came and settled in the village, cultivating land abandoned by the original settlers and their descendants, or land allotted to them by the village; or another class who either merely sojourned in the village or cultivated while residing in other villages.5

1 Revue des Deux Mondes, tome 100, p. 141.

2 Evidence of Colonel Briggs before the Select Committee of the House of Lords (1830), 4155. The Law and Custom of Hindoo castes in the Deccan Provinces of Bombay by Arthur Steele (London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1868), 207.

4

Fifth Report, Vol. II, 299, 352.

Campbell's Cobden Club Essay, 161, 162; see Menu Chap. VII,

sl. 118, 119. Revue des Deux Mondes, tome 100, p. 511.

Campbell's Cobden Club Essay, 165. Maine's Village Communities, 177.

LECTURE
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Servile dependants.

Three classes

of cultivators

in the land.

12

THE THREE CLASSES OF CULTIVATORS.

There were also certain remnants of the non-Aryan or servile tribes who had no land allotted to them, and no interest in the land they cultivated, but cultivated as mere labourers.1 In Mahomedan times they were called kumherahs, and seem to have corresponded to the landless low castes attached to the Kandh hamlets in Orissa.

There were thus three classes of cultivators having an with interests interest in the soil: first, the original settlers and their descendants; second, the immigrants who had permanently settled in the village; third, the mere sojourners in the village, or those who, without living in the village, cultivated land of the village. I shall proceed to consider the position of these classes more fully.

Khoodkashts.

The original settlers in the village with their descendants, and those cultivators who had been admitted to share the same privileges, formed the class of Khoodkasht (own cultivating) ryots, and they had an hereditary right to cultivate the lands of the village in which they resided.3

' Campbell's Cobden Club Essay, 161, 162; Land Tenure by a Civilian, 69, 83, 84. Orissa, Vol. II, 206, 211, 246. Fifth Report, Vol. II, 302.

2 Orissa, Vol. I, 37. Directions for Revenue Officers, 63. Evidence of Colonel Briggs before the Select Committee of the House of Lords (1830), 4078, and of Lieut.-Col. Barnewall before the Select Committee of the House of Commons (1832), 1744.

3 Campbell's Cobden Club Essay, 165. Land Tenure by a Civilian, 66, 68, 80. The Land Tax of India by Neil B. E. Baillie (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 2nd Ed., 1873), p. xliii. Fifth Report, Vol. II, 299, 301. Harington's Analysis, Vol. III, 353. Whinfield's Law of Landlord and Tenant (Calcutta: Wyman & Co., 1869), p. 15. Orissa, Vol. II, 206. Directions for Revenue Officers, 5, 61, 62. Thakooranee Dossee v. Bisheshur Mookerjee (which I shall hereafter cite as the Great Rent Case), B. L. R., Supp. Vol., 209 (per Trevor, J.), 319 (per Peacock, C.J.), 3 W. R. Act X, 29.

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They were also called Chupperbund (house-tied), Mooroosee (hereditary), and Thani (stationary).1

LECTURE

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Their rights were regulated by custom, probably the Their rights regulated by custom of many centuries, and having at least as much custom. force as any written law. These customs were no doubt in some cases violated by the hand of power; but that is only what happened with all rights, whether depending upon express and written law or upon the unwritten law of custom; and these violations were doubtless more frequent in Mahomedan times. But it is to these customs we must look to ascertain the rights of almost all the parties having interests in the land.

India.

The Khoodkasht class of ryots appears to have been the In Southern same as the class of Meerassadars in Southern India, (called also ulcudies in Tanjore,3) who existed in very early times, and were anciently called Caniatchy ryots in Malabar.*

They could not be ousted while they continued to culti- Their right to occupy so long vate their holdings, and pay the customary revenue; but as they cultion the other hand they could not originally transfer their the customary holdings without the consent of the community. There

1 Campbell's Cobden Club Essay, 165; Orissa, Vol. II, 242. Directions for Revenue Officers, 64.

Fifth Report, Vol. II, 41, 42, 120, 299, 489 to 492. Steele's Deccan Castes, 207. Evidence of Lieut.-Col. Sykes before the Select Committee of the House of Commons (1832), 2173.

3 Fifth Report, Vol. II, 492.

Fifth Report, Vol. II, 43, 85. Compare the Puttookut ryots of Dindigul, Fifth Report, Vol. II, 494, and the nair mul guenies of Malabar and Canara, Fifth Report, Vol. II, 77, 78. Mr. Baber's evidence before the House of Lords' Select Committee (1830), 3002.

5 Campbell's Cobden Club Essay, 165,170. Fifth Report, Vol. I, 488, Vol. II, 85. An account of the Land Revenue of British India, by Francis Horsley Robinson (Thacker and Co., 1856), pp. 15,41. Evidence of Mr. Stark before the House of Commons' Select Committee (1832), 427, 428; and Evidence of Colonel J. Munro, 1488.

vated and paid

revenue.

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