54 BRITISH INDIA - AGRICUI^TURAI, ECONOMY IN GENERAL 



ment of the land revenue, but its enforcement in actual practice is ex- 

 tremely rare. 



I/iving with the group of landholders were artizans and menials fol- 

 lowing hereditary occupations for the benefit of the community. Their 

 services were defined, and were paid for by a definite share of the produce 

 at harvest time. All, landholders and dependents, had their houses crowd- 

 ed together on a common site, the impure leather workers and scavengers 

 being settled on the outskirts or in separate sites close to the main village, 

 lyastly there was a common fund for village expenses, and disputes within 

 the brotherhood were settled by a village council. 



In the hill country in the north of the Panjab the conditions were 

 wholly different. The Rajas were universal landlords in a far sronger 

 sense than in the plains. Each holder held his parcel of land in virtue 

 of a deed of grant given by the ruler to himself or to his ancestor. He 

 built his house on his own allotment, and the individuals in possession 

 of contiguous holdings were not necessarily united by any real or pretended 

 bond of relationship. It was impossible that groups of holdings scattered 

 over the hills should form village communities. The holding was itself 

 the true revenue unit, and the man who held it had an equitable title to 

 remain undisturbed so long as he tilled the land and paid the rent. The 

 cultivators had a right of user in the waste, but the title of the State to do 

 what it pleased with it was clearer and stronger than in the eastern plains, 

 where the ruler might well hesitate to interfere with powerful villages. 

 In Kangra, the most important hill distrcit in the Panjab, the first settle- 

 ment officer tried to squeeze the tenures into a pattern which he knew. 

 He transformed into estates the large groups of scattered holdings which 

 the Rajas had formed for revenue purposes. In this way he subjected the 

 landholders to a purely artificial bond of joint responsibility for the pay- 

 ment of land revenue. What was more serious he allotted to these unreal 

 village communities large areas of waste, much of it forest land, as common 

 property. The result has been that the State has been greatly hampered 

 in its efforts to preserve forest growth for the good of the surrounding popu- 

 lation and of the community at large. 



No greater contrast can be imagined than that which exists between 

 the green hill country of Kangra in the north east of the Panjab and its 

 arid south western plains. Curiously enough extreme dissimilarity of agri- 

 cultural conditions produced very considerable resemblances in land te- 

 nure. The rainfall in the South West is so scanty that outside the strips 

 of land close to the great rivers cultivation depends wholly on artificial 

 irrigation. To supply this became the best foundation of a permanent 

 title, and it was recognized that this had been acquired in one form or ano- 

 ther b)^ the well sinker over the land reclaimed through its means from the 

 vast siuTounding waste. The latter was used as a grazing ground for sheep 

 and a browsing area for goats and camels. Certain tribes or leading fami- 

 lies which from time immemorial had pastured their flocks and herds in 

 the waste claimed rights over it like those which the Rajas asserted over the 

 hill forests. Similar rights were claimed by the descendants of holy men 



