52 BRITISH INDIA - AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY IN GENERAL 



curious result has been that they have acquiesced in a system whereby 

 one rule of inheritance may be applied in one village and another next door. 



The settlement ofhcers put in charge of the assessment of the land 

 revenue of the different districts were given the still more important task 

 of deciding and recording the title under which every field in the country 

 was held and tilled. Their business was to register the rights and obli- 

 gations of individuals and communities as they actually existed. 



Thus it would seem that every care had been taken to preserve the 

 framework of land tenure as it stood. The foundation on which that 

 had always rested was that the holding is the property of the family, and 

 not of the individual. That fact is written large in the early records of 

 rights, where the undivided family holding is very prominent. Settle- 

 ment officers also fully recognized the communal framework of village 

 life ; in fact, as we shall see, they assumed its existence even in parts of the 

 Panjab, where it had no reality. But the rapid material development 

 following on the enforcement of order and the fixing of a reasonable land 

 revenue demand for a term of years, combined with the influence of Wes- 

 tern ideas in the sphere of political economy and the practical working 

 of English courts of law, shook and nearly destroyed the land system. 

 A communal village organization and a land tenure wliich had withstood 

 the political storms of centuries threatened to succumb to " the cancers 

 of a long peace ". 



Ownership of land in the English sense does not exist, and never did 

 exist, in the Panjab. The powers of the actual holder are Hmited by the 

 title of the State to a share of the produce and by the right of the family 

 to restrain him from any action which would without necessity involve 

 the loss of its patrimony. Svibject to these restrictions he has full powers 

 of management and disposes of the produce at his pleasure. Before British 

 rule the Raja or Chief often realized the "ruler's share" in kind, and what 

 was left to the tiller of the soil was usually a bare subsistence. An old 

 family, which had a claim to ownership but did not actually cultivate or 

 arrange for cultivation, might be allowed a petty share of the harvest, 

 say 740"^^' while the ruler took 74^^- Va^d, or V^. Over the waste the 

 State asserted extensive rights, and, even when it was included in village 

 boundaries, did not hesitate to plant on it new settlers, on the plea that 

 t was more than the old village required for pasturage. The predecessors 

 of British rulers did not trouble their heads with theory, being occupied 

 with the practical problem of filling their coffers. But the easiest way to 

 define the relations between native rulers and landholders in the Panjab 

 is to look on the State as superior landlord, and the actual holders as en- 

 titled to keep the land they tilled and graze their cattle in the surrounding 

 waste, so long as they paid the customary rent to the Government. It is 

 hardly worth while to discuss the question whether the landholder had a 

 right of alienation. Sales did occur, but generally speaking the demand of 

 the State left nothing of value to transfer. Rent only emerged when the 

 British Government reduced the share in kind into a cash payment fixed for 



