I^AND TENURKS IN THE PANJAB 57 



One of the oldest forms of land tenure in the world, the periodical re- 

 distribution of village or tribal land, survived till comparatively recent times, 

 and possibly still has left its traces, among the Pathan tribes on the North 

 West Frontier of British India, and is widely prevalent among the inde- 

 pendent tribes which, though lying beyond the administrative border 

 line, are subject to the political control of the Chief Commissioner of the 

 North West Frontier Province. It is a more curious fact that it still exists 

 among a few village communities in the extreme south-east of the Panjab. 

 A Pathan tribe usually acquired its |)ossessions by the sword. Having 

 done so, it proceeded to partition the conquered lands. Each subdivision 

 of the tribe took its own block, and each clansman in the subdivision, took 

 his share in one or several parcels, as soil conditions dictated. Sometimes 

 a share was allotted for each woman and child. The subdivision built a 

 big village in its block and called it after its own name. Besides the clans- 

 men the village population included religious men, and village servants 

 and artizans, who held land free of charge in return for services in peace 

 and war. Another class of dependents of superior rank was located in 

 hamlets on the outskirts of the block. They were known by the pictur- 

 esque names of " loin-girders" and " dwellers in the shade ", paid no rent, 

 and in time of peace rendered no service. But when their -Pathan 

 overlords, in whose shade they sat, wer^ raided or marched out to raid 

 others, they were bound to join in the fray. To secure a continuance of 

 the original equality of division, it was the rule that the land should be re- 

 distributed at shorter or longer intervals. In Peshawar the custom lasted 

 down to a comparatively recent period and even involved the transfer 

 of whole yillages. " Shifting severalty " is likely to disappear when a 

 civilized Governement fixes for a term of years the State's rent for each 

 holding, and when the order it establishes encourages the extension of cul- 

 tivation and the assertion of individual rights. But among the indepen- 

 dent Pathan tribes it will probably long survive, and be a source of trouble 

 and bloodshed. In 1901 heavy fighting went on in Upper Swat across the . 

 Peshawar border, because after one subdivision had held an important 

 village for twenty-five years, the others thought it was their turn. Among 

 Pathan tribes religious men and chiefs were often given special grants of 

 land for their maintenance. It is easy to see how, when once subdivision 

 broke down, Pathan tenures would take on themselves forms very like 

 those familiar elsewhere, and that is what has actually to a large extent 

 happened. 



It is the business of a registrar of titles in land to record facts as he 

 finds them. But in the special circumstances which attended the occupa- 

 tion of the Panjab by the British, it was justifiable to go further and to 

 revive titles in abe3'ance, which had been recently destro^^ed by the oppres- 

 sive acts of our immediate predecessors. It is questionable whether this 

 might not equitably have been done more freely. But on the whole the 

 settlement officers did their work well. They cannot be charged with 

 subverting the communal character of the land tenure^ on the contrary, 

 their tendency was to impose a communal village organization where it did 



