LAND REVENUE ADMINISTRATION

Early revenue administration. Pre-Muhammadan period.

290. The aboriginal unit was in Berar, as throughout India, the village. Into the vexed question of the nature of the early village community it is not necessary to enter here, complicated as that question is by the difficulty of describing in terms of civilized thought the half conscious reasonings or instincts of savages and in India by the unreliable nature of the evidence. Of the differences between the primitive Dravidian and the primitive Aryan village, of the early growth of law and the subsequent growth of a quasi-feudal society in India we really know absolutely nothing. The latter process seems to have been at least accelerated in Berar by the successive invasions, and their resulting overlordships. The Indian village has in a crystallized form survived them all, and into the successive types of rule its headman or patel has always been adopted as an integral part. Whatever the group may have been that settled the early village, whether a family or some still more formless thing, and whether it enslaved or not the aboriginals whom it may have found, certainly it had not attained to a conception either of individual property or of property in land. Cultivation was co-operative and the fruits were divided, each man receiving according to the position he bore in the village or the nature of his services to it. Thus the headman and other magnates appropriated their shares and the servants were recompensed for their service. Thus also was tribute yielded to the still greater chieftain under whose leadership they had entered the land, or under whose dominion they had fallen: a tribute which, becoming fixed by tradition at one-sixth though frequently raised by unscrupulous rulers to a higher proportion, has become the parent of modern land revenue and incidentally of the supreme rights of the State in land. As time passed the cumbrous process of sharing the harvest gave way to the expedient of dividing the soil. The more powerful members of the village body became land-holders and because the chief village offices were connected with such holdings the Muhammadan word watan has acquired its peculiar local significance of heritable village office and dignity. A more complicated society supervened and the need for records and accounts produced the patwari. Further, in each village out of those who were unable to attain the dignity of landownership, there grew up a staff of artizans, menials and servants, who became hereditary and served the villages, not for payment by the job (such a thing was of course unknown), but for a regular remuneration, paid in kind, chiefly as of old by a fixed share in the harvest. This ancient village community is the prototype of the modern Berar ryotwari village.

Early Muhammadan period. 1294 A. D.-1596 A. D.

291. We possess no detailed information about the earliest method of Moslem revenue management, but the policy seems to have been to preserve the older village institutions. The hereditary offices of Deshmukh and Deshpandia are supposed by some writers to owe their origin to this period, but it is a very doubtful supposition. The Deshmukh was a head patel of a circle of villages and was responsible for apportioning and collecting the land revenue, while the Deshpandia was a head patwari or kanungo, and kept the accounts. They were always Hindus, the Deshmukh generally a Kunbi and the Deshpandia a Brahman, and they may have been instituted by the Muhammadans to conciliate a conquered people. An interesting description of this period may be quoted from Sir A. Lyall. ' If we take the centuries between 1300 and 1600 A.D. as the period (roughly stated) of independent Muhammadan dominion in the Dakhan, and compare it with the same breadth of time in Western Europe, the Dakhani government will not lose much by comparison. We shall be struck by resemblances more than by contrasts in all that concerns civil policy and the use made of their arbitrary power by princes and lords of the land. Long wasting wars, bloody feuds, revolts, massacres, assassinations, cruel and barbarous punishments, sad stories of the death of kings-all these things fill the chronicles of Plantagenets  and Valois as plentifully as the annals of the Bahmanis. ' Yet, as has often been said, although these descriptions now startle us into horror and astonishment, it may be guessed that life in those times was more tolerable than it appears to modern readers. A majority of the people took no share at all in the constant fighting, or in the perilous intrigues which were continually exploding in violent catastrophes that shook or overturned the throne; while another section of the people enjoyed the stirring life and chances of rebellion, and staked their lives on the sport quite as readily as men now risk their limbs against a tiger. For Berar, it seems to have been always an agricultural country, situated off the high road of foreign armies, and distant from the capitals of royalty. It suffered like other districts from inroads and internal disorders, but its battle-fields are comparatively not numerous. Then the settled Muhammadan government always attempted, in the interests of revenue, to protect the tillers of the land, keeping the collections as much as possible in their own hands, except when jagirs were granted, and never formally abandoning the cultivator to the mercy of a feudal lord. We may conjecture that the peasantry as a class were much above the mediaeval serfs and villeins of Europe; and altogether that they were at least as well off under the Bahmani and Imad Shahi rulers as the commons of any outlying counties of England during the great wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Probably the peasants of France were worse off up to the end of the 17th century. Certainly the subah of Berar was in a high state of cultivation, and yielded an ample revenue when Akbar annexed it; and the land must have prospered still more under the wise administration of Malik Ambar, of whom more hereafter. In those ages the whole Deccan swarmed with adventurers from every nation in Asia, and from the African coast of the Indian Ocean. These men and their descendants settled in the towns, their chiefs occupied most of the high military and civil offices; but, in Berar at least, the Muhammadans appear to have left the Hindus in undisturbed possession of the soil. And although the hereditary revenue authorities, the Deshmukhs and Deshpandias who were chief officers of districts with much influence and profit, are said to have been instituted by the early Muhammadan kings; yet in Berar these places and perquisites have from ' time immemorial been in the hands of Hindus.'

Mughal period 1566 A.D to 1270 A.D

292. Berar was ceded to the Emperor Akbar in 1596 A.D. and was one of the subahs which came under the famous land revenue settlement made by him and his Hindu minister Todar Mal. The early Hindu system had been one without any survey or measurement and without any records to speak of. The Mughal rulers crystallized it into more business-like permanence by measuring and recording villages, parganas and sarkars with their revenue assessment. The first beginning of a change from the mere levy of a share of grain to a regularly assessed cash revenue may be traced to Akbar's settlement, and the cash rates were when possible fixed for a period of years instead of being liable to annual alteration. A more or less uniform system of revenue accounts was also established. The settlement was fixed by measuring the arable lands and making a careful estimate of their produce. The unit of land for purposes of assessment was taken to be a bigha-a term used to denote a piece of land measuring a little more than two-thirds of an acre. Each bigha was rated at the value of one-fourth the estimated produce, and the sum total of the demand on a village or group of villages thus calculated was termed its tankhwa or standard rent-roll; from this rating were omitted lands which were barren or never brought under cultivation. The average rate of assessment per bigha of land was R. 1-4-0. Mr. Bullock, in his report on North Berar for 1854-55, gives the following account of the land assessment of this province under the Mughals. It is probably taken from some old papers preserved among the kanungo records, but these are usually copies, several times repeated, of original documents. ' I may as well mention that under the kings of Delhi, when the mode of assessment Was under strict regulation, the valley of Berar was divided into three main descriptions of land, viz. Ainkali, Miankalas and Kalaspati. The ainkali was the deep black soil. The  miankalas was the soil where the black began to mingle with a lighter description. The kalaspati was the light soil lying  towards the hills. The black soil is towards the centre of the valley. Each of these divisions had its general rate fixed upon each bigha, but divided into various sorts with a rate on each, and these rates were only slightly modified by local circumstances. The bigha of arable land was less than the bigha now in use in Khandesh or elsewhere, which is 3600 square yards, and the garden and inam bigha was larger, viz. the inam land was measured by the Ilahi gaz, equal to 7225  square yards per bigha. The garden land was measured by the bara Sikandari gaz which gave 5500 69/100 square yards per  bigha, and the arable land by the chhota Sikandari gaz, which gave 2256 25/100 square yards per bigha. The average rates on land were as follows:-1st sort, divided into two sorts-1st sort R. 1-3-9; 2nd sort R. 0-13-3 per bigha; 2nd sort, subdivided into two sorts-1st sort, R. 1-1-3, 2nd sort R. 0-12-3 per bigha; 3rd sort, subdivided into two sorts-1st sort R. 0-11-6, and 2nd sort R. 0-11-3 per bigha. Garden land in two kinds-1st sort Rs. 3-11-0, 2nd sort Rs. 2-4-0. The whole was under kham wasul and the Annual Settlement paper was as nearly as possible that which I have now introduced, but with even more exact detail. We can form some idea of the prosperity of the valley at that time, as the total revenue in the year quoted during the reign of Alamgir was Rs. 27,44,750-11-0, because the land was fully cultivated, and the population abundant and vigorous, instead of being ' scanty, ill-fed, and weakly, as they are now.' The present Amraoti District comprised the greater part of the sarkar Gawil of which the demand on account of land revenue was 21 lakhs. Another important settlement in Berar was made by Malik Ambar, a minister of the Nizim Shahi Kings, who ruled in their name in the Deccan in the seventeenth century. Although this settlement left a great mark on the province, if the traditions of the people are to be believed, the information about it is very meagre. It is probable that his assessments varied with the crop and were not fixed like the Mughal settlement; they were also lump assessments on the village in some cases. Grant Duff states that when the assessment was in kind it was ⅔rds of the produce, and that where there was a cash assessment, it equalled in value ⅓rd of the produce. Malik Ambar is also credited with having settled the land revenue upon a recognition of private property in the land, whereas Akbar held that all land belonged to the state. Writing in 1870 Sir A. Lyall estimates that the revenue raised in Berar in the 17th century was much larger than that paid under the original settlements made after the cession and that the cultivated area was not less. His conclusion as to the view we ought to take of the history of this period is as follows:-' It is a common mistake to suppose that the normal state of India was that in which we English found the country when we conquered most of it; whereas each province usually fell into our hands, like a rotten pear, when it was at its worst, and because it was at its worst. The century that ' preceded our rule may be regarded as a catastrophe in the history of India's government-a dark age of misrule interposed between two periods of comparative, though unequal light. We who are now clearing away ruins, repairing an utterly dilapidated revenue, may sometimes fancy that we are raising a new and quite original edifice, when we are only reconstructing upon the old foundation up to the level of earlier architects.'

Period of double Government (Do Amli) Maratha and Nizam, 1720 A.D. ―1803 A. D.

293. The Maratha connection with Berar originated with the grant of chauth and sardeshmukhi by the Delhi Emperor in 1717 A.D. The Marathas pretended to keep regular accounts with the Nizam's officers who were never openly ejected from their posts, as from a conquered country, though they were often entirely set aside for a time. Districts were called Do Amli, that is, jointly administered; and in all the revenue papers the collections are divided, the Maratha share being usually sixty per cent. Of this ten per cent, was called sardeshmukhi and the rest mokasas which seems in Berar to have been the technical term that included in a lump sum all the Maratha dues except the ten per cent, above mentioned. The mokasa was thus made up; chauth, twenty-five per cent.; faujdar's allowance for district administration, twenty-five per cent. This period has been described as one of barefaced plunder and fleecing without attempt at principle or stability. Whenever the Nizam appointed a collector the Marathas appointed another, and both claimed the revenue, while foragers from each side exacted forced contributions so that the harassed cultivator often threw up his land and helped to plunder his neighbours.

Period of Nizam's Sovereignty. 1803-1853 A.D.

294. In 1803 the Nizam was placed in sole possession by the British Government and the administration became even worse than before. The system was introduced of farming out the land revenue to contractors, who adhered to no rates, but squeezed what they could out of the ryot's crop and his goods and chattels. Whole taluks and parganas were let and sublet to speculators for sums far above the ancient standard assessment. During the ministry of Raja Chandu Lal (1820-1840) the land revenue of certain tracts was regularly put to auction at Hyderabad for the highest bid. It is related of that famous minister that he did not even respect these auction sales, as it was usual to do, but disposed of the same contracts simultaneously to several different buyers. Then came the opportunity of the pargana officers; he who secured, them on his side kept the farm or sometimes these officers solved the complication equitably by putting all purchasers on a roster, whereby each got his turn at the collections. While this roster was known to be full, even Raja Chandu Lal could not persuade a fresh set of contractors to deal with him. There is a story told of one of these contractors that he rode out of Hyderabad after the auction With his face to the horse's tail. His followers approached him and asked ' why this undignified position?' ' I am on the look-out,' said he, ' for my successor to overtake me.' Some of the great farmers-general deserve mention. One Raja Bisan Chand who held the greater part of the Berar valley in farm about 1831 left a name alike for extortion and miserliness at which the Kunbi still grows pale; to pronounce it of a morning early is unlucky Another by name Puran Mal, a mighty moneylender of Hyderabad, at one time got most of Berar in farm. In 1839 he was turned out of his districts by the Nizam's minister, under pressure from the British Resident. Puran Mal refused to quit hold of his security for advance made, and showed fight when his successors sent agents to take his place. However in the end he had to give way; but he presented to the Hyderabad government an account showing a balance due to him of two millions sterling, which the ministry altogether refused to pay, proving by a different system of book-keeping, that Puran Mal was deeply in debt to the treasury. Puran Mal's successors were Messrs. Pestanji and Company enterprising Parsi merchants, who in 1841 received large assignments of revenue in Berar for reimbursement of advances to the State. But in 1845 they were ordered to give up their Berar districts, and on their refusal their collecting agency was attacked and sixteen men killed. They were then forced to evacuate the assignments with a claim of forty lakhs of. rupees against the Nizam. Messrs. Pestanji and Company had made large and liberal advances to tenants in Berar; they had thus restored cultivation over wide tracts, and rekindled the lamp in many deserted villages. Among Berar agriculturists they left a very good reputation. One result of the farming system and the disorder into which the country fell, was a great decrease in the revenue. The net revenue collected about 1815-20 was not more than half the sum which the province was estimated to yield in 1803, and the land revenue of the present Amraoti District mentioned in the treaty of 1853 was only 7 lakhs, a great fall from the 21 lakhs of Akbar's settlement. Under the farming system the government had no means of checking false revenue returns and the rough enquiries made by the British officials after the cession shewed cultivation to be concealed to an incredible extent. Thus in 1854 the Resident reported that whereas the cultivated area in North Berar was recorded at 425,000 bighas, the naked eye detected by rapid survey of each village more than 1,700,000 bighas. The Government simply looked to the revenue for which the contractor was answerable and did not trouble about the extension or otherwise of cultivation. In spite of this concealment of cultivation the ryots in 1853 were found to be in a very depressed and impoverished state. This was due, not so much to the severity of the assessment, for that was not found to be too heavy, but to its shameful inequality. Deshmukhs, Brahmans, 'Rajputs and Musalmans were paying an average of 7½ annas abigha, while the Maratha Kunbi was paying as much as 1 rupee 14 annas a bigha. The mode of assessment was very arbitrary and seldom had any reference to the capabilities of the soil. Thus it was found that one man was paying 10 rupees for land of the same extent and description as that for which another man was paying 100 rupees. When waste land was required by a cultivator it was apportioned out by the patwari by guess work so that the amount allotted to any individual depended partly on the ability of the patwari to judge area, and partly on his good will towards the cultivator.

Land tenure and the position of revenue officials prior to 1853.

295. The ordinary tenure from time immemorial had been that which permitted a man to keep possession of his fields so long as he paid to government the customary rent. Some such general principle of reciprocal convenience must have always prevailed, so long as land was more plentiful than cultivators. Malik Ambar (1612 A.D.) is stated to have recognised the ryot's private property in his land, but such rights, if ever they were conferred, cannot long have out-lasted the wear and tear of the disorders which followed his death. We may suppose that where the tenants managed to keep land for any long time in one family they acquired a sort of property adverse to all except the government; that where the land changed often by the diverse accidents of an unsettled age, in such cases occupancy never hardened into proprietary right. Good land would have been carefully preserved, bad land would be often thrown up; failure of crops or the exactions of farmers would sever many holdings; and all rights ceased with continuity of possession. When misgovernment became chronic, and the country was incessantly exposed to be- wasted by famine, war, or fiscal extortion, the tenant's hold on any one piece of land would be more precarious and ephemeral. But perhaps it may be said that in theory the general basis and limit of property in the land was cultivating occupancy undisturbed, except by violence or injustice, so long at the traditional standing rates of assessment were paid upon the fields taken, up. It is easy to see that various rights and prescriptions might, under favouring circumstances, arise out of this sort of holding. Several terms as mirasi, mundkari, etc., were formerly known to distinguish the class of occupants in Berar whose possession of their land was long established and by descent, but their precise privileges were never closely defined. The essence of these holdings seems to have been the privilege of paying a fixed sum without regard to cultivated area, and the right to trees. The property was also admitted usually to be heritable and transferable. Then certain advantageous tenures were created by expedients used to revive cultivation in deserted tracts; long leases were given at a rent mounting upwards very gradually year by year, or a whole ruined village was made over by what is called palampat, a tenure which fixes the rental of the entire estate without taking account of the spread of cultivation. Whatever rights in the land -may have grown up previously, they all disappeared under the Maratha and Nizam's government. Under this regime the mass of cultivators held their fields on a yearly lease which was made out for them by the patel at the beginning of each season; the land was acknowledged to belong to the State, and as a general rule no absolute right to hold any particular field, except by yearly permission of the officials, was urged or allowed. A man could not always give up or transfer his holding without official authorization. Cultivators were ejected from their holdings and others put in their places, as it suited the taprice or interest of the farmer of the revenue. Under such a system all value was wrung out of property in land.

The patels, Deshmukhs and Deshpandias who were employed to manage the collection of land revenue in villages and parganas never got beyond hereditary office nor transmuted themselves into proprietors of the land. The patel always remained the agent between the State and the village tenants for cultivation and collections. He was paid by rent-free land, money-dues and dignities, the whole being grouped under the term watan. The Deshmukhs and Deshpandias had risen to great local importance under the Muhammadan dynasties. They held by virtue of office the right to take certain dues from the revenue collected in their subdivisions, but some of the more powerful families received large grants of land in jagir and patents for the collection of additional subsidies on condition of military or police service and the maintenance of order. Towards the decline of the Mughal power in Berar they sometimes obtained their subdivisions in farm, and some of them were probably fast developing into the status of the talukdars and zamindars of Upper India. But the Nizam and Marathas were too powerful to let any subjects stand between them and the full demand, and in 1853 it was decided that though these officials had frequently, beside their money dues, large quantities of inam or revenue-free land, and they themselves advanced the most extravagant pretensions, their real position was that of hereditary officers and not that of landed proprietors.

Early British administration, 1853-1869.

296. The Amraoti District when made over in 1853 resembled a squeezed orange, as the Nizam's talukdars in anticipation of the cession had screwed up their demand to the highest pitch and had even in some cases extorted collections in advance. The mistake was at first made by the new administration of attempting to collect these extraordinary rates, and in 1855-56 there were heavy irrecoverable balances, and at the end of that season cultivation began rapidly to contract-a sure sign of over-assessment. The mistake was however soon corrected and the District entered upon an era of prosperity from which it never looked back. The British officials in the period from 1853 to 1869, the first year of the 6urvey settlement in the Amraoti District, were occupied in clearing up the confusion into which the land-revenue administration had fallen and in feeling their way towards some better system. The services of the Deshmukhs and Deshpandias were dispensed with, pensions being granted to them in perpetuity as compensation for the loss of their emoluments, [The amount disbursed under this head in the Amraoti District in 1907-08 was Rs. 57,000.] The patel and the patwari were retained. An annual jamabandi was made by the Deputy Commissioner through the medium of the patel and the account of each man's holding was taken from the patwaris papers; But without accurate measurements no assessment could be satisfactory, as the officials were working in the dark. The system was fraught with the greatest inconvenience both to the Government and to the people, besides being made a fruitful source of peculation and corrupt practices. A five years' settlement was at one time ordered by the Government of India but the information on record about it is very vague and it seems that owing to the complete breakdown of the khasra survey by patwaris that it was never brought to completion. The urgent need of some scientific method of assessment was felt. The question arose whether the malguzari system of Northern India or the ryotwari system of Bombay should be adopted, The former was in 1860 sanctioned by the Government of India, but in 1861, in deference to the earnest protests of the local officials, [Colonel Meadows Taylor was one of the local officials who was most strenuous in his opposition to the introduction of the malguzari system. In his autobiography he writes of the question as follows. ' The Supreme Government had proposed to make a settlement of my province on the same system as had been adopted in the North-Western Provinces, and I had to fight a very hard battle with the authorities to gain my point. I believe I was considered " most impracticable and obstinate" and incurred, I have little doubt, much ill will, but for that I care absolutely nothing. I could not up. hold any system that I believed would be an injury and a wrong to my people, or become a party to a course which I considered was not only unjust and unpopular to the last degree, but which would abolish all those ancient hereditary tenures to which the people had clung' with devoted pertinacity through all revolutions and vicissitudes for many centuries, and which the old Musalman kings and rulers of the Deccan had continuously respected. My view of the question was very strenuously supported by my friend Bullock, Commissioner in Berar; and in the end I rejoice to say that we so far prevailed as to enlist the sympathies of our Chief Commissioner on our side, who earnestly protested against the system proposed from Bengal, and was successful in his opposition, insomuch as the question was deferred for future consideration. In writing the " Story of my Life'' I cannot pass this question over without notice, as it was a point on Which, firmly believing myself to be in the right, I deliberately risked not only the good-will of the Government of India at that time but my own employment as Deputy Commissioner. I would never have agreed to carry out the unjust measure proposed in ignorance of local tenures by the Government of India, and my friend Bullock and myself Were prepared to have resigned our appointments in case stringent orders-were issued on the subject; and there is no act of my public life which, to this day, gives me more pleasure and satisfaction than my successful resistance to the orders of Government to the settlement being made according to the North-West system.'] these orders were cancelled and sanction was given to the introduction of the Bombay system which is described below. The patels of Berar thus narrowly missed being promoted to the position of malguzars or landlords, the fate which befell their brethren in the Central Provinces. In spite of the absence of a proper system of settlement this early period of British rule was one of great prosperity, and remissions of revenue were almost unknown. Writing of it in 1870 Sir Alfred Lyall remarks that 'the land revenue increased and multiplied with marvellous rapidity, under the combined 'stimuli of good Government, railways and the Manchester cotton famine. Cultivation spread over the land like a flood 'tide' and Sir R. Temple's remarks in 1867 are also deserving of quotation. 'The condition of Berar when the province was assigned to British management, though weakly, and needing restorative measures, was not beyond the hope of speedy recovery. And fortunately the means of restoration were at hand; for the soil was famed far and wide among the peasantry for its fertility; and its repute, always high, was further enhanced by the fact of so much of it having remained fallow of late years, a circumstance which was supposed to ensure a rich return to those who reclaimed the waste and raised the first crops on virgin culture. The neighbouring districts were full of families who had emigrated thither from Berar, and who, with the usual attachment of the people to their original patrimony, were anxious to return on any suitable opportunity. Thus hundreds of families and thousands of individuals immigrated back into Berar. Many villages in the Nagpur country lost many of their hands in this way, and were sometimes put to serious straits. Some apprehension was even caused to the Nagpur officials. But of course the natural course of things had its way, and Eastern Berar became replenished. This was only one mode out of several, which it would be tedious to detail, whereby the cultivation of Berar was restored and augmented.'

Berar Survey and Settlement system.

297. The basis or unit of assessment is the survey number or plot of land of a size not less than bullocks. The arable land, whether cultivated or waste but available for cultivation, is split up into these numbers, the area of which is accurately ascertained by survey measurement. Each field is separately measured by means of the chain and cross staff, and in the field register there is a separate map of each field complete in itself. The area of the holding is obtained by simple arithmetic and the calculations are recorded. This detailed field register obviates the necessity of having the village map on a larger scale than 8 inches to the mile. The area of each survey number does not exceed from 20 to 30 acres, and the minimum below which survey numbers cannot be divided is 5 acres in the case of dry crop land, 1 acre in the case of rice land, and ½ acre in the case of garden land. The fields are marked off from each other by a dhura (a strip of land 4½ feet in breadth) being left uncultivated between them; by mounds of earth (warli), 10 feet in length by 5 feet in breadth, and 3 feet in height; and by stones (gotd, khun) between 2½ and 3 feet in length sunk in the ground at certain angles. Besides the culturable land the gaothan or village site is also surveyed and allotted, and land is reserved for free grazing and other purposes. The term parampok is used for numbers that are unculturable by reason of having tombs, sites of wells, etc., on them, and the Bombay plan of allowing parts of numbers to be deducted from the culturable area as bad bits (potkharab) is followed. The survey being done, the classification of the soil begins. There are three classes of land, unirrigated or dry crop (jirait) land, rice land and garden land (bagait) which is called motasthal if irrigated by means of a well, and patasthal if irrigated by a channel. For classification purposes each field is divided temporarily into parts of some two acres each. Three tests to discover kind of soil, depth of soil and freedom from defects are made in each part. For the first test soils are divided into three classes or orders, which are described briefly as black, red and white. The full description is: ' First order-of a fine uniform texture, varying in colour from deep black to deep brown. Second order-of uniform but coarser texture than the preceding and lighter in colour, which is generally red. Third order-of coarse, gravelly, or loose friable texture and colour varying from light brown to grey.' For the second test, that of depth, the soil is dug up and a crowbar driven in until it is obstructed by rock or some hard substratum or until it has gone in 1¾ cubits, that is, 31½ inches. For the third test a list of eight defects has been drawn up, the chief being the presence of fragments of limestone or of excessive sand, slope, liability to flooding, excess of moisture, and clayey soil. When a classification is being made, the classer draws an outline of each field, marks the parts into which it is temporarily divided and enters in each part figures and symbols to show the results of each test. A soil to be of standard quality, a sixteen anna soil, must be black, of full depth, and free from all defects. Indeed, it may have some special advantage, such as a beneficial flooding in the rains, which raises it two or four annas more. For every detail or combination of details in which a plot falls short of standard quality so many annas are deducted according to a table which has been drawn up. Each field is finally valued as a field of so many annas according to the average value of the plots contained in it. In the case of garden land it is necessary in addition to examine the effect of the well or other means of irrigation on the soil. Rice land is classified on a scale of its own. The full details thus obtained about each field are entered in a prate or field book which is kept at the headquarters of the District. These operations of measurement and classification have nothing whatever to do with the pitch or amount of the assessment. They are only the methods by which the assessment is distributed over the numerous individual holdings of a ryotwari system. The basis of the distribution of the assessment having being fixed, the next step is for the Settlement Officer to work out the rates of assessment. These rates are determined in the following manner. The area dealt with, which is the subdivision of a District known as the taluk, is divided into groups homogeneous as to physical characteristics and economic advantage, such as climate, rainfall, general fertility of soil, communications and the like. For each of those groups uniform maximum rates are fixed. These maximum rates are the sums which would be leviable upon a field, the soil valuation of which is sixteen annas. Thus if the maximum rate be Rs. 3 per acre of a sixteen anna field, the assessment per acre upon a field the valuation of which was eight annas would be R. 1-8 and so on. By applying the maximum assessment rates to the soil valuation the rate per acre on each field is arrived at. In an original settlement the difficulty is to arrive at suitable maximum rates. This difficulty was solved for Berar by taking the rates found in the neighbouring District of Khandesh as a basis for the early settlements. Special rates are imposed on rice and irrigated land. The settlement is made for 30 years and at the end of that period is liable to revision.

Land tenure.

298. The ordinary tenure is the ryotwari tenure, and all land paying revenue to government under that system is known as khalsa land. The state is recognised as the superior landlord, and the settlement is made directly with the cultivator himself and not through middlemen. The assessment is on the land, not on the person. Subject to certain restrictions, the occupant is absolute proprietor of his holding, may sell, let or mortgage it, cultivate it or leave it waste, so long as he pays the assessment, which may be revised on general principles at the end of the fixed term. Being in arrears with the assessment at once renders the right of occupancy liable to forfeiture. No occupant is bound to hold his land more than one year if he does not like it, and provided he gives notice according to law, he is free to relinquish his holding. The occupant is free to make any improvement he likes but he must hot apply the land to any other purpose than that for which it was granted without the permission of the Deputy Commissioner. Government retains a right to all minerals in the soil. Only one occupant is recorded as the khatedar, to whom the government looks as responsible primarily for the revenue. Apart from this he is not necessarily a person with any rights in the soil whatever. Mutation of names is not compulsory and hence it often happens that a khatedar, from motives perhaps of sentiment, perhaps of sloth, prefers to keep his name on the government register long after he has parted with the land. This description requires to be qualified in the case of land given out for cultivation since 1st January 1905. From that date all unalienated assessed land is disposed of subject to the following additional condition, viz., neither the occupant, nor his heirs, executors, administrators and approved assigns, shall at any time lease, mortgage, sell, or otherwise encumber the said occupancy or any portion thereof without the previous sanction in writing of the Deputy Commissioner.

Original Settlement.

299. The original settlements were made in the Amraoti, Daryapur and Morsi taluks in 1869, 1870 and 1871 by Major P. A. Elphinstone, that in Chandur in 1873 by Mr. R. R. Benyon, and the rates came into force between 1871 and 1874. The settlement dealt with 1493 Government or khalsa villages, which were divided into three groups in each of the Amraoti, Ellichpur and Daryapur taluks, and into four groups in the Morsi and Chandur taluks, the grouping being based upon proximity to markets, convenience of water-supply and similar considerations. The maximum rates were based upon those adopted in the taluks already settled in other Districts, and these in their turn owed their origin to rates prevailing in the neighbouring Bombay District of Khandesh. In the first group the maximum rate per acre was fixed at Rs. 2-4 except for the town of Amraoti, where it was Rs. 2.8, and the taluk of Chandur where with the exception of three villages on the railway line it was R. 1.14. In the second and third groups except in the Chandur taluk, the maximum rates were Rs. 2 and R. 1-2 respectively; in the Chandur taluk the rates for these groups were R. 1-10 and R. 1-6 respectively. For the fourth group in the Morsi and Chandur taluks the rates were R. 1-8 and R. 1-4 respectively. Lower rates were fixed for the Chandur taluk because of the existence there of a large amount of waste land (223,415 acres). For land irrigated by wells and watercourses a maximum rate of Rs. 6 or 7 was fixed for villages in the first group and of Rs. 3 or 4 for villages in the remaining groups. The average rate per acre in the different taluks worked out as follows:-

There was an increase of 32 per cent, in the land revenue for the District as a whole, the highest increase being in the Amraoti taluk where it was 51 per cent., and the lowest in Ellichpur where it was 15 per cent.; the increase in the other three taluks of Chandur, Daryapur and Morsi was respectively 43, 37 and 24 per cent. In the instructions given to the Settlement Officer great stress had been laid on the necessity of light assessments and much of the increase of land revenue was due to the discovery of large areas of concealed cultivation. The settlement was made for a period of 30 years. The effect of the settlement was that, in the words of Sir Alfred Lyall, The Berar cultivator passed from all the evils of rack-renting, personal insecurity and uncertain ownership of land to a safe property and a fixed assessment,' and the same writer in discussing the value and popularity of the settlement goes on to say: ' Yet we should remember that this contrast between the two administrations, which cannot now fail to strike the generation which remembers the Assignment of 1853, would not have much impressed the foregoing generation if the country had been transferred thirty years earlier. The Berar cultivator is lucky in that he came under British management at a time when our government had sown its wild oats, and reaped the fruits thereof; when we had drained the slough of fiscal blunders and blind carelessness in which our Collectors had been floundering, and had placed them on the firm and fertile ground of method and moderation. It would be dangerous to assert that the agriculturist under the rigid, irresistible, unconscious maladministration of the early English school was even so well off as under the conscious haphazard misrule of the Native government, which was kept elastic by the possibility of evasion or revolt. This rigid irresistibility is probably the prime cause of our mismanaging (as we constantly do) the land revenue of a new province during the first years of our administration. Even in 1853, when the Nizam's talukdars had in North Berar made over to us a squeezed orange, we began by attempting to collect the extraordinary rates to which the land revenue demand had been run up by our predecessors, whence it may be guessed ' that the agriculturists did not at once discover the blessings of British rule. On the other hand there are some reasons why cession to the British should have been more popular in Berar than it usually is found at first to be. Peaceful cultivating communities, living at a dead level of humble equality under strong tax-collectors, got none of those compensations which indemnified the Rajput clansmen of Oudh for chronic anarchy and complete public insecurity. Rough independence, the ups and downs of a stirring life, a skirmish over each revenue instalment, faction fights for land affording a good working title to the survivor-all these consolations were unknown to the Berar Kunbi, nor would they have been his taste had they been within his power. He had as much land as he wanted without quarelling with anyone; all that he desired was secure possession of the fruits of his labour, and a certain State demand. The classes which lost by the assignment of Berar to British administrators were those who had hitherto made their profit out of native administration- the talukdars, the farmers of any kind of revenue, and the hereditary pargana officials.'

Revision Settlement.

300. The original settlement gave what has been called ' free trade in land' and this combined with the high wages prevalent attracted from the Central Provinces and from Northern India a constant stream of immigrants. ' From the Central Provinces,' wrote Sir A. Lyall, 'came labourers and cultivators by thousands; from North India came artizans and the classes which take service in the towns.' The period of settlement was one of steady prosperity broken only by the famine of 1896-97. Revision settlement operations were started between 1896 and 1898. The settlement of Amraoti, Chandur, Morsi and Ellichpur taluks was carried out by Mr. Francis, and that of the Daryapur taluk by Major Garrett. The remeasurement and re-classification were carried out on the partial system, only 6 villages in the Daryapur taluk being entirely remeasured. The classification of soils of villages varying from 9 to 10 in each taluk was tested. The work of the original survey was found to be satisfactory and was confirmed. The old system of grouping was changed, each of the taluks of Daryapur, Ellichpur and Amraoti constituting one group, and Morsi and Chandur each being divided into two groups. In fixing the maximum rates an enhancement of revenue was held to be justified on four grounds:-

(a) That communication had greatly improved.

(b) That there were general indications of sustained prosperity, as for instance a large increase in population, houses, carts, wells and working cattle.

(c) That the culturable area was fully occupied and that land was valuable, subrents of three times the Government assessment being easily paid.

(d) That the first assessment had been easily paid.

The maximum dry crop rates fixed varied from Rs. 2-12 in Amraoti and Ellichpur to R. 1-12 in Chandur. Garden land irrigated before the original settlement was assessed at the maximum dry crop rate of the group in which it was situated. Land irrigated from wells dug since the original settlement was treated as dry crop land, and no extra assessment was levied. Land irrigated by channels from stream was assessed at a combined water and soil rate of Rs. 8 and rice land was assessed at a rate of Rs. 6. By the revised settlement the revenue demand was raised by 35 per cent. in the Amraoti taluk, by 30 per cent. in the Ellichpur taluk, by 22 per cent, in the Daryapur taluk, by 25 per cent in the Morsi taluk and by 52 per cent. in the Chandur taluk. The average incidence per acre in the different taluks worked out as follows:-

In the case of 68 villages of the Amraoti taluk, 3 villages of the Ellichpur taluk and the whole of the Chandur taluk, it was decided to levy interim rates for 15 years and the full rates for the remaining period of settlement. Owing to the famine of 1899-1900 the revised rates were not brought into force till 1903-1904 in the taluks of Amraoti, Ellichpur, Daryapur and Morsi, and till 1904-05 in the Chandur taluk. Since their introduction the new rates have been paid with ease and no remissions have been found necessary.

Land Revenue administration of the Melghat.

301. A considerable portion of the Melghat though nominally classed as forest, has a revenue history of its own both curious and interesting, and its classification as forest has for a long time been misleading. At the time of the cession in 1853 the whole of the Melghat was occupied either by the persons known as the Melghat Rajas or by villages of Korkus and other aboriginals, who practised dhya cultivation and were constantly changing their village sites. Land revenue was assessed on the yoke of oxen, though the existence of bigha rates in a number of villages (which have remained unaltered to the present day) proves that some advance had been made on this primitive system of assessment. The tract was divided into 12 parganas and a nominal list of 853 villages was found in the records at the cession and was maintained for a long time afterwards. What was represented by these villages is not exactly clear, as they were never verified by the new administration. Probably they never represented separate villages with fixed village sites and definite area's; the habits of the Korkus who were constantly changing their habitation and adopting new village names make it hardly conceivable that without demarcation of village boundaries an authentic list of villages could be maintained. The Melghat had its golden age, though unfortunately it had no historian-for after the cession it was stated that within the memory of men then living, its hills were thickly populated and well cultivated and a proverb had been current that the villages were within a peacock's flight of each other and that the sound of the drum was to be heard from village to village. In 1860-61 Mr. James Mulheran was in charge of a topographical party which prepared maps for the whole tract on the scale of one inch to the mile, and he wrote an interesting report. The whole tract was still at that time under the administration of the revenue authorities and no alteration had been made in the system carried on under the Nizam's Government. The area under cultivation was found by Mr. Mulheran to be 97,280 acres and the land revenue did not exceed Rs. 12,000. He compiled a list of 300 inhabited and 348 deserted villages but he did not vouch for the separate existence of the latter. In 1866 the Forest Department was organized and the demarcation of the reserves began in the same year. The tract outside the reserves was known at first as the unreserved forests, then as D class forest and finally as C III forest, a name it still bears. The area of this tract, which may now be called the revenue tract of the Melghat, has gradually decreased with the growth of the reserves. It now comprises an area of about 671 square miles and consists of a broad belt lying south of the reserves and adjoining the Berar plains, a small area on the east in the Katkumb pargana, and the whole of the western portion of the Melghat. The forest policy adopted with regard to this tract was to denude it of all forest growth; cutting, grazing and cultivation (subject to the payment of certain dues) being permitted practically without control. This policy was aptly described by an old conservator as an ' apres moi le deluge' policy, and though the Forest Department between 1880 and 1906 drew an income of 23 lakhs from the tract, the work of destruction has been so complete that the tract has been converted into a wilderness, the only timber of any value being now confined to the Bairagarh block. On the revenue side the administration was conducted on paternal lines with a minimum of correspondence and up till quite recently the administration might be described as administration by the patwari and the patel tempered by the occasional interference of the Tahsildar. Systematic rules regulating the condition of cultivation were not framed till 1899, and if changes were from time to time made in the yoke rates they were unrecorded. The whole tract was surveyed by the Imperial Forest Survey Department between 1883 and 1886, maps on a scale of 4 inches to the mile in the more advanced parts and in the scale of 2 inches to the mile in the more backward parts being prepared. These maps were excellent but their chief value lay in the fact that they removed the confusion caused by the old list of villages referred to above; the separate villages of the C. III area were demarcated and surveyed, and at last the revenue authorities were in a position to know exactly what they were dealing with. Some internal demarcation was also done but this was rendered valueless by the failure to carry out some form of ryotwari settlement pari passu with the survey. The need of some advance upon the primitive system of assessment by the yoke rate had long been felt. Mr. W. B. Jones, the Commissioner who visited the tract in 1879, described the revenue system as so unsatisfactory that no change could be made for the worse. ' It is a ryotwari system with many of the evils of other systems and few of its own advantages. The government though nominally dealing with the ryots, leaves them really unprotected and exacts its revenue from patels through alien patwaris, asking no further question. The patel is thus a malguzar with none of the advantages of the position, the cultivator a tenant of the state with few of the advantages of that position.' The project of a ryotwari settlement was not raised Again till 1892, and after some delay the revenue survey was actually started in 1896. It was abandoned however the same year for what now appear to be inadequate reasons. The fugitive nature of the Korku's cultivation and the risk of disturbing those aboriginals were continually put forward as obstacles in the way of a settlement, and it was not realized that in certain parts of the Melghat the cultivation was as stable as in the Berar plains and that the existing system or absence of system left the aboriginal without any protection against the usurer and land grabber, who were gradually ousting him from all the best land. The question of a settlement was again raised in 1906 and a special officer was deputed to report on the tract. He found that the fugitive nature of the cultivation had been greatly exaggerated. Cultivation was permanent over a large area, a lien on fallows being retained and the idea of private property in land had fully developed. The yoke rate system in its primitive form would hardly be said to exist and the needs of the trachad given birth to a bastard ryotwari system. The figure of 16 acres (which had been assumed merely for statistical purposes to represent the amount of land cultivated by a single yoke of oxen) had been converted by the patwari into a standard of measurement. Although the land was held merely on a yearly occupation tenure and every occupant was liable to ejectment at 6 months notice, the land was being dealt with exactly as if the occupier had the heritable transferable right which exists in the rest of Berar. Land was being sold, mortgaged and sublet to a great extent, and a considerable area had been taken up by outside speculators, who were waiting their chance to get it converted into a valuable property by the efforts of the aboriginals who would become their subtenants. In the centre of the Amner pargana the aboriginal had been dispossessed of his land by the money lender and the liquor seller, principally Bohras and Kalars from Burhanpur, and the land at the foot of the hills bordering on the Berar plains was almost entirely in possession of Berar cultivators. But elsewhere the older races still reigned supreme, over 50 per cent. of the total occupied area being held by Korkus and Gonds. In 1906-07 there were 338 villages, 240 of which were inhabited and cultivated, 56 uninhabited but cultivated and 42 both uninhabited and uncultivated. The cropped area was 166,376 acres, of which 25 per cent. was under cotton, 14 per cent. under juari, 8 per cent. under wheat and 4 per cent. under gram. The revenue work was done by 11 patwaris who received as remuneration 5 per cent. on collections as pay and 3 per cent. as chillar (writing expenses). The patels received 6 per cent. on the land revenue collections. There were 39 jaglias paid at the rate of Rs. 5 a month and each village had its village servant-generally a Balahi, Nihal or Korku-who was paid at the rate of 1 kuro of grain for each yoke of land. The special officer recommended the introduction of a ryotwari settlement into the greater part of the tract, the doubtful portions being parts of the Bairagarh and Dhulghat parganas where the conditions justifying the retention of a yoke rate system, viz., shifting cultivation and excessive unoccupied areas still to some extent existed.

Orders on the subject were issued in 1909. The Chief Commissioner decided that any large blocks of unculturable land in the tract should be demarcated and reserved as A class forest, being managed with the aid of the usual forest staff, with the objects of (1) securing a continuous supply of bamboos, small timber, fodder, etc., and (2) protecting the forest on the steep hill-sides in order to secure the continuance or improvement of existing meteorological conditions. Small patches of cultivation inside these extensive blocks would be abolished so as to secure compactness. It was also decided that the great majority of the villages were'not worthy of regular settlement which will probably be confined to the tract round Dharni and the block of black soil in the Bairagarh pargana, together with the best of the villages on the southern border.

Special tenures in the Melghat.

302. A full account of the Melghat Rajas has been given in the section on leading families. According to the returns for 1906-07 the total area of the jagir villages held by the Melghat Rajas was 48,572 acres, which included 15,413 acres classed as unculturable, 26,982 acres fit for cultivation but unoccupied, and 6117 acres occupied with an assessment of Rs. 3,605. The two villages leased to the jagirdar of Kalamgana contained 2016 acres of which 1,521 were classed as unculturable, and 258 acres were occupied with an assessment of Rs. 115 of which Rs. 10, annas 4 were paid to Government. There are two inam villages, Kalamgana Khurd and Wazar. The former has been referred to in the section on leading families; the latter is held on behalf of the temple of Ganpati at Akot. The area of the two villages was 2520 acres, in 1906-07, of which 1050 acres were occupied with an assessment of Rs. 1481, the whole of which was enjoyed by the inamdars.

Tenures―Ryotwari tenure.

303. The ryotwari tenure already described is in force throughout the District except the Melghat. Out of 1640 villages in the plain taluks, 1615 are settled on this tenure, and are known as khalsa villages. The area of these villages in 1906-07 was returned as 1,968,467 acres, of this 57,668 acres were occupied by village sites, tanks, rivers and the like, 162,061 acres by forests, 56,318 acres were set apart for village purposes and for free-grazing, 7 acres were left in the Chandur taluk as unculturable (parampol) land, and the balance of 1,692,412 acres was available for cultivation. Of the latter area 1,692,345 acres were occupied and only 67 acres remained unoccupied. The land revenue demand of the khalsa villages amounted to Rs. 28,02,724 in 1906-07 against Rs. 27,69,144 in 1905-06.

Jagir tenure.

304. Jagir now means any rent-free holding consisting of an integral village or villages. The history of the tenure is thus traced by Sir Alfred Lyall-' The jagir [ Berar Gazetteer 1870, page 101.] of Berar seems to have been originally always, like the earliest feuds, a mere assignment of revenue for military service and the maintenance of order by armed control of certain Districts. In latter times the grant  was occasionally made to civil officers for the maintenance of; due state and dignity. The interest of the stipendiary did not ordinarily extend beyond his own life, and the jagir even determined at the pleasure of the sovereign or it was transferred, on failure of service, to another person who undertook the conditions. But some of these grants when given to powerful families acquired an hereditary character. It would seem, nevertheless, that until recently these estates very seldom shook off the condition under which they were created. The assignments were withdrawn when the service ceased; and they were considered a far inferior kind of property to that of hereditary office. Probably the double government of the Maratha and the Nizam kept this tenure weak and precarious. The Nizam would have insisted on service from his jagirdars during his incessant wars. The Maratha treated the Mughal jagirdars very roughly, taking from them 60 per cent. of all the revenue assigned, wherever such demand could be enforced. To plunder an enemy's jagir was much the same as to sack his military chest-it disordered the army estimates. When this province was made over in 1853 to the British, some villages were under assignment to jagirdars for the maintenance of troops, and these were given up by their holders. Up to that date, however, the system of tankhwa jagir or assignment for army payments by which whole parganas in Berar had been formerly held, had barely survived. The irregularities of the old practice were notorious. A few followers to enable the jagirdar to collect the revenue were sometimes the only armed force really maintained; no musters were held, and when troops were seriously called out the jagirdar made hasty levies or occasionally absconded altogether. There are still several personal jagirs without condition in Berar which have been confirmed to the holders as a heritable possession. But none of these were made hereditary by original grant, save only the estate given to pious or venerable persons-to saiyids, fakirs, pirzadas, and the like-and perhaps an estate which was first assigned as an appanage to members of the reigning family. Other jagirs have been obtained by court interest, acquired by local officers during their tenure of power, or allotted to them for maintenance of due state and dignity, and such holdings were often continued afterwards as a sort of pension which slided into inheritance. Almost every jagir title was given by the Delhi Emperor or the Nizam, one or two by the Peshwa; but not one full grant derives from the Bhonsla dynasty, which never arrogated to itself that sovereign prerogative.' Alienation of jagirs by sale, mortgage or otherwise is prohibited except in cases where the jagir on confirmation by the British was converted into a freehold. Personal jagirs are continued hereditarily subject to a legacy duty or succession fees graduated on a scale according to the degree of relationship of the heir. Jagirs for religious and charitable objects [ Such jagirs may be compared with the mediaeval frankalmoin.] such as for the support of temples, mosques, idgahs or other public buildings or institutions, or for service therein are continued, so long as the buildings or institutions are maintained in an efficient state, and the service performed according to the conditions of the grant. A jagir for personal maintenance may be divided by inheritance, though not in any other way. But even its division by inheritance is strictly limited to the direct heirs male of the body of the original grantee. Adopted children and heirs through women are not recognized. A jagir for service may not be subdivided without forfeiture. The latter is a tenure in which the jagirdar is little more than a trustee with a right to make something for himself from his trust, in the former he is a proprietor. The relations between the jagirdar and his tenants are governed by chapter VII. of the Berar Land Revenue Code. Tenants are divided into two classes, ante-jagir and post-jagir tenants. The former are those who have held their land from a period prior to the alienation and they are entitled to continue in possession subject to the payment of the survey assessment. Post-jagir tenants pay rent according to agreement with the jagirdar. The revenue courts have no cognizance over disputes between jagirdars and their tenants. The rights of the latter are amply protected. When the court is called upon to determine what shall be considered a reasonable rent, the enhanced value of the property due to improvement effected by the tenant is not allowed as a reason for enhancing rent. In cases of ejectment also the court can order compensation to be paid for the unexhausted improvements made by the tenant. A notice of 6 months is necessary before a landlord can enhance the rent of a tenant and an annual tenancy cannot be terminated by either party without 3 months notice.

The number of jagir villages in the plain taluks of the District is nineteen. The total area was 22,396 acres in 1906-07 of which 969 acres were included in village sites, tanks, rivers and the like and the balance of 21,427 acres were occupied for cultivation. The land revenue of these villages enjoyed by the jagirdars amounted to Rs. 34,528, and the quit-rent paid to Government was Rs. 237.

Palampat tenure.

305. The word palampat means a protecting lease, and the palampat tenure originally was one under which whole villages were made over at a fixed rental for a number of years, no account being taken of the subsequent spread of cultivation. It thus resembled the modern izara system. Many however of the Berar palampats (and those in the Amraoti District are a particularly striking instance) are well situated villages of extremely fertile land, such as even in the worst of times must always have tempted cultivation. It seems probable therefore that this tenure lost its original meaning and that it became more often than not an honorific grant for the support of personal dignity. Six villages in the Daryapur taluk are held on this tenure by Deshmukh and Deshpandia families. The total area of these villages is 8716 acres, of which 8445 acres are occupied, and the revenue assessed is Rs. 17,126. Of this Rs. 11,450 are enjoyed by the palampatdars and the balance of Rs. 5676 is paid to Government. The latter payment is fixed for ever and is not liable to change at future settlements. The older tenants in palampat villages are protected by the Berar Land Revenue Code in the same way as in jagir villages.

Inam land.

306. Under the head of inam are classified plots of land in khalsa villages held wholly and partially rent-free. They are either service or personal grants. [The word jagir is sometimes used for all personal grants and inam for all service grants; but the definitions given id the text are the correct ones.] In 1907-08 the area so held was 18,489 acres, the land revenue assigned was Rs. 31,349 and the quit rent paid to Government was Rs. 3719.

Cesses.

307. When Berar came under British management in 1853, a class of village servants known as havildars was found in existence. It was the havildar's duty to assist the patel in collecting the revenue and in other village matters, and he also occasionally acted as a chaukidar, patrolling the village at night. It was no part of his duty however to report crime. He was paid from a fund known as the village expenses either in money or land, receiving also contributions of grain from the villagers. After the cession the havildar was commuted into a police chaukidar, but it was found that the patel needed help and that the village required a recognised servant for watch and ward and other services. It was decided to unite the various offices in one man, where one man was capable of performing them, and the new official was termed jaglia. A cess of one anna in the rupee of land revenue was sanctioned in 1866 and was known as the jaglia cess. The practice grew up of spending the surplus of the jaglia cess on public improvements, and to mark this fact the designation of the cess was changed in 1880 to the "Jaglia and Local Cess." In 1867 a school cess was imposed at the rate of 1 per cent. on the land revenue, but the system of calculating this percentage was not uniform and great confusion resulted. In 1879 it was changed to 3 pies in the rupee, and in 1880 it was amalgamated with the Jaglia and Local Cess. The combined cesses are now being recovered in khalsa or unalienated villages at the rate of 15 pies per rupee of the assessment of each survey number, and at 2 per cent. of the total of the assessments of all the survey numbers in jagir villages. The proprietors of jagir villages can make their own arrangement for the maintenance of jaglias, but if the Deputy Commissioner considers these inadequate, he may levy an additional cess at the rate of one anna in the rupee on the total of the assessments of all the survey numbers. The surplus of the jaglia and local cess, after the expenses of the jaglia cess have been defrayed, is handed over to the District Board, The surplus so handed over in 1907-08 was Rs. 62,000, while Rs. 1,11,450 were spent on the jaglia force. The school cess produces about Rs. 44,000. In 1856 a road cess was imposed at the rate of one per cent. of the land revenue, but owing to a mistake of the Settlement Department, effect was not given to the intentions of Government, and, instead of a cess being levied, this percentage of the land revenue was set aside in each District for the maintenance of roads. The road cess in jagir villages produces Rs. 518.