as to have no sensible effect; for the great mass submit quietly, and will continue for generations to submit, until a total change shall have been wrought in their character. There is nothing extraordinary in this: it is the natural consequence of their condition. They had always, under their native princes, been accustomed to implicit submission to the demands of the Government officers. . . . As, therefore, they will not protect themselves by resisting injustice, we must endeavour to protect them by laws which would be unnecessary in England, or in almost any other country not under foreign dominion; and we must, for this salutary purpose, invest the Collector and Magistrate, the person most interested in their welfare, with power to secure them from exaction, by authorizing him to make summary inquiry into all illegal exactions, to recover the amount, to restore whatever is recovered to the ryots, and to punish the offenders.

(Arbuthnot, Minutes of Sir T. Munro, 258.)

104. AN ANALYSIS OF THE INDIAN VILLAGE SYSTEM IN THE DECCAN

From the Report on the Territories conquered from the Peshwa, by Mountstuart Elphinstone.

(Elphinstone, who had been resident at Poona down to the outbreak of the last Mahratta war, was placed in control of the reorganisation of the territories annexed after the fall of the Peshwa. His admirable Report on these provinces shows not only profound knowledge, but a real sympathy with Indian customs, and a strong desire that they should be disregarded as little as possible in the new system.)

In whatever point of view we examine the native government in the Deccan, the first and most important feature is, the division into villages or townships. These communities contain in miniature all the materials of a state within themselves, and are almost sufficient to protect their members, if all other governments were withdrawn. Though probably not compatible with a very good form of government, they are an excellent remedy for the imperfections of a bad one; they prevent the bad effects of its negligence and weakness; and even present some barrier against its tyranny and rapacity.

Each village has a portion of ground attached to it, which is committed to the management of the inhabitants. The boundaries are carefully marked, and jealously guarded. They are divided into fields, the limits of which are exactly

known; each field has a name and is kept distinct, even when the cultivation of it has been long abandoned. The villagers are almost entirely cultivators of the ground, with the addition of the few traders and artisans that are required to supply their wants. The head of each village is the Patil, who has under him an assistant and a clerk. There are, besides, twelve village officers . . . the astrologer, the priest, the carpenter, barber, etc., but the only ones who are concerned in the administration of the government are the Sonar, or Potadar, who is silversmith and assayer of money, and the Mhar, who, in addition to various other important duties, acts as watchmen to the village. Each of these classes consists of one or more individuals, according as their orginal families have branched out. The Mhars are seldom fewer than four or five....

The Patils are the most important functionaries in the villages, and perhaps the most important class in the country. They hold their office by a grant from the Government (generally from that of the Moguls), and are entitled by virtue of it to lands and fees, and have various little privileges and distinctions, of which they are as tenacious as of their land. Their office and emoluments are hereditary, and saleable with the consent of the Government, but are seldom sold, except in cases of extreme necessity. ... The Patil is head of the police, and of the administration of justice in his village, but he need only be mentioned here as an officer of revenue. In that capacity... he allots the lands to such cultivators as have no landed property of their own, and fixes the rent which each has to pay he collects all the revenue for Government from all the ryots; conducts all its arrangements with them, and exerts himself to promote the cultivation and the prosperity of the village. Though originally the agent of the Government, he is now regarded as equally the representative of the ryots, and is not less useful in executing the orders of the Government than in asserting the rights, or at least in making known the wrongs of the people.

The Kulkarni1 keeps the numerous records and accounts of the village. The most important are: 1st, the general measurement and description of all the village lands; 2nd, the list of fields, with the name, size, and quality of each, the terms by which it is held, the name of the tenant, the rent for which he has agreed, and the highest rent ever produced by the

1 Clerk.

field; 3rd, the list of all the inhabitants, whether cultivators or otherwise, with a statement of the dues from each to Government, and the receipt and balance in the account of each; 4th, the general statement of the instalments of revenue which have been realised; and, 5th, the detailed account where each branch of revenue is shown under a different head, with the receipts and balance on each. Besides the public records, he generally keeps the accounts of all the cultivators with each other, and with their creditors; acts as a notary public in drawing up all their agreements, and even conducts any private correspondence they may have to carry on. He has lands, but oftener fees, allotted to him by Government, from which he holds his appointment.

With the few exceptions already mentioned, all the villagers are cultivators; and these, as there are few labourers, are distinguished by their tenures into two classes, that of Mirasis or landed proprietors, and that of Upris, or farmers.

As I was particularly directed to attend to the tenures of land, I have called on the collectors to furnish the requisite information. . . . The result of those reports and of my own inquiries is, that a large portion of the Ryots are the proprietors of their estates, subject to the payment of a fixed land-tax to Government; that their property is hereditary and saleable, and they are never dispossessed while they pay their tax, and even then, they have for a long period (at least thirty years) the right of reclaiming their estate, on paying the dues of Government. Their land-tax is fixed; but the late Mahratta Government loaded it with other impositions, which reduced that advantage to a mere name.

...

An opinion prevails throughout the Mahratta country, that under the old Hindu Government all the land was held by Mirasis; and that the Upris were introduced as the old proprietors sank under the tyranny of the Mahomedans. This opinion is supported by the fact that the greater part of the fields, now cultivated by Upris, are recorded in the village books as belonging to absent proprietors; and affords, when combined with circumstances observed in other parts of the peninsula, and with the light land-tax authorised by Manu, a strong presumption that the revenue system under the Hindus (if they had a uniform system) was founded on private property in the soil.

All the land which does not belong to the Mirasis belongs to the Government, and to those to whom Government has

assigned it. The property of the Zemindars in the soil has not been introduced, or even heard of, in the Mahratta country.

The cultivated land belonging to Government, except some parts which it keeps in its own hands, was always let out to Upris, who had a lease, with the expiration of which their claim and duties expired.

Such are the component parts of a village . . . but there are some of its internal affairs still to be mentioned. The maintenance of the village temple; its fixed and authorised pensions and annual charities; its ceremonies and religious festivals; its alms to beggars and entertainments to guests, especially to Brahmins and Fakirs; its occasional amusements, tumblers, dancers, etc.; its offerings to the Patil and other village officers on occasions of condolence or congratulation; the expenses of the Patil on the public affairs, and the fees of peons stationed in the village, entail a number of expenses on the community, which, unless allowed for from the Government revenue (which is very rare), are defrayed by a tax on the village. . . . In general these expenses were in the proportion of one-tenth, and from that to one-fifth, to the public revenue. . . In addition to these, were occasional expenses, such as repairs of the village walls, the necessity of entertaining Sibandis for defence, or of paying an enemy or an insurgent for forbearance, which it was beyond the means of the village to defray at once. In this case the village contracted a public debt, which was gradually paid by an annual assessment, and sometimes provided for by mortgages, or grants of land on the part of the villagers.

The next division is a Taraf, composed of an indefinite number of villages, with perhaps an addition of uninhabited mountain and forest land (there being no other land not included in some village). A Taraf is under no particular officers; several of them make a Pargana, which is under a Deshmukhi or Zemindar, who performs the same functions towards the Pargana as a Patil towards the village. . . It is universally believed in the Mahratta country, that the Deshmukhis, etc.,were all officers appointed by some former Government; and it seems probable that they were the revenue officers of the Hindu Government; that these officers, being hereditary, like most others under the Hindus, they were in possession of too much knowledge and influence to be dispossessed by the Mahomedans who . . . allowed them to settle with the Patils. . . . They even often farmed out the

U

whole Pargana to the Deshmukhis, who by this means acquired so much authority in some parts of the country as to be able, on the decline of the Mahomedan kingdoms in the Deccan, to maintain themselves, for a time, in independence.1

These officers still hold the land and fees that were originally assigned them as wages, and are still considered as servants of the Government; but the only duty they perform is to produce their old records when required, to settle disputes about land by a reference to these records, and to keep a register of all new grants and transfers of property either by the Government or by individuals. This register must, however, be very incomplete, as no man is obliged to record his deed unless he chooses. The Deshmukhi's profits are very great; generally, I am told, above 5 per cent, not only on the revenue but on the land. Five acres in each hundred, for example, will belong to the Deshmukhi, and a twentieth of the collections besides; he has also various claims in kind, as a pair of shoes every year from each shoemaker, a portion of ghee from those who make that preparation, etc., etc.

The outline of the revenue system adopted since our acquisition of the country is contained in my letter dated July 10th, conveying instructions to the collectors. . . . The leading principles are to abolish farming, but otherwise to maintain the native system; to levy the revenue according to the actual cultivation; to make the assessments light; to impose no new taxes, and to do none away unless obviously unjust; and above all, to make no innovations.

The improvements in the administration of the revenue department [under the new system] are greater than in the rulers. Faith is kept with the Ryot, more liberal assistance is given him in advance, he is not harassed by false accusations as pretexts to extort money, and his complaints find a readier hearing and redress. Some of our alterations are less agreeable to all, or to particular classes. We have more forms and more strictness than our predecessors. . . I have strongly recommended to all the collectors to take every opportunity to introduce servants of the former Government, but much time must elapse before this can be entirely accomplished. . .

(Forrest, Select Writings of Elphinstone, 274.)

1 This is the class which, in Bengal, Cornwallis chose to regard as proprietors of the districts which they administered.