20 



supremacy between the English and the French. In the lan- 

 guage of the " Fifth Eeport," when the Northern Circars were 

 handed over by the Nizam to the English in 1766,- " the whole 

 system of internal management had become disorganized. Not 

 only the forms but even the remembrance of civil authority 

 seemed to be wholly lost." The Chingleput district had almost 

 entirely been depopulated by the wars with Hyder, so much 

 so that " hardly any other signs were left in many parts of the 

 country of its having been inhabited by human beings than the 

 bones of the bodies that had been massacred or the naked walls 

 of the houses, choultries and temples which had been burnt."" 

 The terrible memories of '' Hyder kaldbam," or the ravages of 

 Hyder's cavalry, still live in stories current among the common 

 people at the present day. Tan j ore, which was in the posses- 

 sion of the Nabob of Arcot in the years 1774 and 1775, was 

 almost ruined by "his inhuman exactions ; " and, according to 

 Rev. Schwartz, the famous Luthern missionary and an eye- 

 witness, the people would have preferred Hyder's invasion to 

 the Nabob's occupation. In the second year, the Nabob ex- 

 torted from the landholders no less than 81 lakhs of rupees 

 which is nearly double the present land revenue of the district. 

 It will have been seen from the extracts from the letters of the 

 Jesuit missionaries already given, that Ekoji took 80 per cent, 

 of the gross produce as revenue, leaving only 20 per cent, to 

 the mirasidars. On the accession of Pratap Singh to the 

 musnud the mirasidars' varam appears to have been 30 per 

 cent, of the pisanam and 45 per cent, of the kar crop, and the 

 rate for the pisanam crop was raised by him and his successors 

 till it amounted to 40 .per cent, in the time of Amir Singh. 

 How little the rights of the mirasidars were, owing to misgov- 

 ernmeut, understood at the time will be seen from the fact that 

 the English commissioners, who reported on the resources of the 

 country on the deposition of Amir Singh and the installation of 

 Surfoji under British auspices, characterized the settlement 

 made by Amir Singh fixing the Government share of the 

 produce at 60 per cent, and the mirasidars' varam at 40 per 

 cent., as a " profligate remission." In the zemindar and poli- 

 gar countries the only limit to the exactions to which the ryots 

 were subjected was their ability to pay ; the customary share 

 of the produce belonging to Government was nominally half, 

 but additional taxes were levied on various pretexts, reducing 



" Even in the Tanjoro delta a large part of the population must have died of famine. 

 In 1781, the year liefore Hyder's invasions the outturn of crop in the Tanjore delta was 

 11,909,085 kalams of paddy. In 1781-82 the outturn was 1,808,808 kalams, and in 

 1782-83 only 1,603,122 kalams. The outturn gradually rose again till it r^fiched 

 10,416,746 kalams in 1706-97.— Tif^e Tanjore District Manual, page 813. 



