THE BENARES MAGAZINE. APRIL, 1850. I. NOTES ON THE LANDED TENURES OF BENGAL AND THE NORTHWESTERN PROVINCES. THE word Serishtadar, as now used, is probably familiar enough to most of our Indian readers. It suggests the idea of a comfortable and portly old Native gentleman, with a shawl round his waist, a pair of spectacles on his nose, and a bundle of papers under his arm. Sixty years ago, however, it would seem that we had Serishtadars in white jackets and nankin trousers. Such, at least, does our imagination depict Mr. James Grant "Serishtadar of Bengal" about the year 1786. This gentleman, in that year, wrote a very valuable revenue paper called an Analysis of the Finances of Bengal. We will introduce our subject with an extract from this work: "About eleven hundred years since there is some reason to believe that a revolution introductory of the Brahmin religion and the sway of new rulers happened, at least in that part of Bengal where the Native inhabitants were Budoistes (Buddhists ?) or wholly uncivilized, as, indeed, may still be said of them, being chiefly of the tribe of chuars or robbers, of a swarthy black, like the neighbouring mountaineers on the North and West supposed to be the aborigines of the country." Supposing Mr. Grant's tradition to be correct, we need not go very far from the famous city whose name our Magazine bears, to seek for the aborigines of the country. A few hours sail up the winding Ganges will bring us to Mirzapore, the Liverpool of the East. Within sight of its busy market are hills and woods where these children of the VOL. III, Α soil find a home and a rough livelihood. There we may still meet them scattered over the country as field labourers, or as freeholders of small patches of land granted by the local Chiefs in acknowledgment of their services as forest keepers. Some, almost as wild as their neighbour the tiger of the forest, skulk among the rocks and hills forming part of the great Vindhyan chain, and stretching along to the West of the Ganges from Rajmehal to Rotasgurh and Rewah. Others, with habits and superstitions more resembling those of the Hindoo population, inhabit the rough lands which stand between the plains and the Hill country. Some have become half Hindoos, others are more than half savages; short in stature, ill-looking, and black, these Coles or Bheels* contrast strongly in appearance with the better grown and fairer Rajpoot. Miserable though they now be, it is probable that the fair plains of India had them as their earliest masters. According to local tradition, a people called Cheroo drove this aborginal race from the plains to the hills and forests. From the Cheroos sprung that famous tribe called Bhur, Rajbhur, or Bhurputwa, which most undoubtedly occupied the country before the Rajpoots spread themselves over it. Still to pursue our enquiries in the country about Benares, we find immense mud forts, tanks, and other excavations, which are in that province universally attributed to the agency of the Bhur tribes. If we turn from these mute witnesses of the vigour of a race now nearly lost, to the country people, we shall find that the Rajbhurs hold a permanent place in their myths and traditions. Time-honored chronicles tell us, for instance, how in the Ghazeepoor district the Rajpoots of Talookah Bahnsdy, were once slaves to the Bhurs; how, when their masters were drunk at a feast, the Rajpoots fell upon them, killing some, enslaving the rest, and dividing the country between the Nirowny Rajpoots of Bahnsdy, the Nihom Rajpoots of Reowtie, the Birwar Rajpoots of Muneer and Mujos, and the Kinwar Rajpoots of Syutwar. So, again, in the Mirzapore district, we learn that Goodun Deo of the Ghurwar family of Rajpoots, from Kanouj, visiting Ramgurh under pretence of pilgrimage, seized upon the country, wresting it from the hands of a drunken and slothful Bhur King. In the Azimgurht district, too, we shall find traces of the same tribe, the same immense forts and excavations attributed to the Rajbhurs, or as they are sometimes called, the Assoors Known by various other names as Koond, Dhangar, Mair, Mina, &c. or Demons. The Brahmin* and Rajpoot tribes, by force or fraud, drove away these earlier tribes, a few of whose descendants are still to be found. Sturdy Chiefs, like Lot or Abraham of old, divided the land; the jungle disappeared, the swamp was reclaimed by the toil of the military colonists, and the works of cultivation and irrigation began. The sons of the village patriarch, his dependents, the offsets perhaps of some neighbour tribe, united to do him honor and to give him strength. One mess of plain food supplied the males of the ruling family, one stack-yard and granary contained the common treasure of their fields; separate property and separate interests were unknown. To this day, that perfect division and separation of property, which is considered so essential to order and comfort in the Western world, is not fully known amongst these village communities, which, be it observed, in the Bengal Provinces have a patriarchal rather than a corporate character. Even in these degenerate times we could point to bodies of brethren, co-partners, whose horses, cattle, cornstacks, yes, whose purse even is common to all. The best feature, however, of the Indian village system is to be found not so much in the unity of the brethren, which can hardly be expected to last for ever, as in the policy which admits a severalty of interest, without destroying the unity and continuity of the parent holding. Long heads and honest hearts had those old village worthies, who devised a system of rural polity, which, in the Northern parts of India at least, has stood, alone, unchangeable amidst change, orderly amidst disorder. It is beyond our present purpose to trace in detail the varied and appropriate schemes, which the Rajpoot tribes have adopted in their village councils. Be it enough to observe that one great object is to maintain every man in possession of the share in the village to which his birth has entitled him; another is to provide for a separation of interest when needful, without a disturbance of the common responsibility of the tribe. We may well believe that men who with their mother's milk had sucked in the taste of equality and common right, were not to be put off in after life with any thing short of their own share, *It is probable that the Brahmin families formed settlements in the country before the Rajpoot invasion. For example, we may note that in pergunnah Kantit of the Mirzapore District, where there are 304 estates held by Brahmins, and 308 by the prevailing clan of Rajpoots, the local traditions universally assign the earlier occupation of the country to the Brahmins. whatever that share may be. If a division of partnership took place by the ordinary laws of the people, all sons shared alike, and the custom of equal inheritance became rooted in their habits. To this day we find the petty Rajpoot land holder, in connection with the original unit, from whence he and his lands derive their title. He does not claim to own so much land, but so many fractions of that original whole which his ancestor called into separate existence. Thus, so far as we know, grew up and flourished those village commonwealths which give their character to the country. All around tended to attach the military colonist to the soil, to lead him, without renouncing the sword, to cultivate the peaceful arts of husbandry. The sword, indeed, was not allowed to rust in his hands; martial training prepared the village youth to maintain stoutly what their fore-fathers had hardly won; a taste for rude free-booting was not entirely kept down by the more chivalrous principles of the clans. At the same time agriculture was the chief avowed occupation of the people, and it was the mixture of agricultural pursuits, with a martial and resolute bearing, which formed the Rajpoot character in that manly mould which it still retains. Their simple plans of life and self-government, their observance of all that habit and custom had sanctified, their determination to assert acknowledged rights, rather than to seek to acquire new ones, in short, the genius of their manners and of their religion tended to bind the village communities closely to the soil. So when the storm of Moslem invasion swept time after time across their fields, the village system rather bent than broke before it. To use the expressive words of one of our best and most talented Statesmen, the late Lord Metcalfe :-" the village communities are little republics having nearly everything that they want within themselves, and almost independent of any foreign relations. They seem to last where nothing else lasts. Dynasty after dynasty tumbles down; revolution succeeds to revolution; Hindoo, Patan, Mogul, Mahratta, Sikh and English are all masters in turn, but the village communities remain the same. In times of trouble they arm and fortify themselves: a hostile army passes through the country: the village communities collect their * In the families of Hindoo Rajahs this rule does not hold good. With them generally the eldest son succeeds to the Raj and to the landed es tates. cattle within their walls and let the enemy pass unprovoked. If plunder and devastation be directed against themselves, and the force employed be irresistible, they flee to friendly villages at a distance; but when the storm has passed over, they return and resume their occupations. If a country remain for a series of years the scene of continued pillage and massacre, so that the villages cannot be inhabited, the scattered villagers nevertheless return whenever the power of peaceable possession revives. A generation may pass away, but the succeeding generation will return. The sons will take the places of their fathers, the same site for the village, the same positions for the houses, the same lands will be occupied by the descendants of those who were driven out when the village was depopulated; and it is not a trifling matter that will drive them out, for they will often maintain their post through times of disturbance and convulsion, and acquire strength sufficient to resist pillage and oppression with success." So far we have endeavoured to trace the steps by which the early colonists became owners of the soil. For its peaceable possession they had to pay tribute to the nearest Chief who was able and willing to protect them. Such tribute, whether levied in kind from their crops, in coin, or other valuable material, or in gratuitous service and fealty, was in truth a sort of black mail levied by the powerful from the weak, as the price of protection. The powerful have in Hindustan, as elsewhere, learned to assert as a right what they could maintain by might. Hence, doubtless, the origin of the King's claim to a share in the produce; a claim readily expanded by obsequious jurists to a share in the soil, or eventually to ownership of the soil. And so in India, as well as in some Western nations, we find the theory that the King is lord of the soil. We do not, however, believe that any claim to ownership of the soil was generally pretended by the Hindoo Chiefs or Kings; they took what they could get, whether a sixth or a fourth, or any other part of the produce; and they collected this their share according to a system of which the traces exist to this day. The Indian genius is fertile in expedients for oppression; one of the oldest seems to be the plan of compromise between the strong and the weak, on condition that the weak should squeeze and coerce those who are weaker still. Whatever be the cause, true it is that the Indian people can only be moved, secundum artem, by the lever of one of their own immediate class. Men who would cry aloud for justice, if any |