Price of Produce at three different periods since the Assignment.

Land Tenures.

Occupancy.

CHAPTER VIII.

LAND TENURES.

SECTION I.-By Cultivation Occupancy.

The land tenures of Berár have sprung, here as elsewhere, from its By Cultivation system of government, and especially of finance. The Mahomedan conquerors never distributed the land of the Dakhan into feuds, although they assigned certain portions on service tenure; they dealt directly with the cultivators, and drew from them a heavy land-tax. The supreme administration was despotic and greedy, but on the whole the king was a better landlord than any of his subjects would have been, and the ryots of Berár were far better off than the serfs or the villeins of mediaval Europe under their feudal masters. Successive governments seem to have been always, in Berár, strong enough to prevent the interception of this land-tax by middlemen. The patels and deshmukhs, who were employed to manage the collections in villages and parganas, never got beyond hereditary office, nor transmuted themselves into proprietors of the land. So when the English received charge of Berár in 1853 we found the village communities, with their staff of servants and their hereditary patel, cultivating the lands which from time immemorial have belonged to each township, upon no other tenure than that which usually 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, land being still more plentiful than cultivators; but of course it has varied in many particulars according to social changes and the state of the country at different periods. If we can rely upon the information collected in 1820 by Mountstuart Elphinstone from the first revenue officers sent into Khandesh after its cession to the British Government, the credit of settling the landtax upon a recognition of private property in the land belongs first to Malik Ambar. Akbar's minister fixed a standard assessment, but Akbar, it is said, held all land to belong to the State. Whereas Malik Ambar is stated to have confirmed his ryots in formal possession of specific fields; and it is even alleged that the joint ownership of its lands by a village community or township was first declared and acted upon by him. Malik Ambar's settlement was made over the greater part of Berár, and in the adjoining parganas of Khandesh. The Collector of Khandesh* reports (in June 1819) that mirási land is saleable at the pleasure of its owner only in that portion of the district which belonged to Malik Ambar's dominions. But the proprietor's titles granted by Malik Ambar cannot long have outlasted 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

* Report by Mountstuart Elphinstone (1820).

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 as 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 mirási, mundkari, &c., are known to distinguish the class of occupants in Berár whose possession of their land is or was long established and by descent, but their precise privileges have never been 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 pálampat, which fixes the rental of the entire estate without taking account of the spread of cultivation.

These, however, are now special instances. Under the Maráthas and the Nizam 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. From the time when Berár fell under two masters-the Nizám and the Maráthas, -all durable rights, say the Berár people, were gradually broken down. Where the Maráthas had established themselves solidly and incontestably, they consulted the interests of their revenue in their treatment of the rent-payers, but upon the debatable lands they had no reason to be considerate. Two necessitous governments, rendered hungry and unsparing by long wars, competed with each other for the land-tax; and when, in 1803, one ruler was driven out, there ensued the usual evils which follow the cessation of protracted hostilities. The country was exhausted and the population scanty. That very year came a severe famine, remembered fifty years afterwards when we took charge of the province; and the revenue collections were made over to farmersgeneral, who advanced the supplies of cash that could not at once be extracted from the soil. Yearly leases and unscrupulous rack-renting came more into fashion than ever; a man who had carefully farmed and prepared his fields saw them sold to the highest bidder ;* whole taluks and parganas were let and sublet to speculators for sums far above the ancient standard assessment. Under these fiscal conditions the exaction of revenue must have wrung nearly all value out of property in land. The mirásdar suffered heavily; he was rated at higher rents than the tenants

* Report of 1854, North Berár.

Land Tenures.

By Cultivation
Occupancy.