221 



were in former times based on the authority of custom, and 

 the ruling power professed to respect custom, even though 

 it might violate it on special occasions. The Muhammadan 

 rule did not alter the internal constitution of villages and 

 the rights of landed property, except by increasing the tax 

 and diminishing the value of the ryot's interest by collecting 

 the revenue by means of farmers. The limitation of the 

 share of the sovereign applied of course to lands newly 

 reclaimed from waste as well as to lands previously under 

 cultivation. In parts of the country where joint village 

 communities were in existence — and this was generally 

 in tracts where lands were irrigated under great sys- 

 tems of irrigation — these communities claimed the right 

 to cultivate the waste within their villages to the exclu- 

 sion of strangers. In the portions of the country exposed 

 to the ravages of frequent wars, droughts and famines, 

 village communities would constantly tend to disappear 

 almost as rapidly as they were formed; and the rights in 

 cultivated land would consequently be of small value ; and 

 there would be no assertion of any right to cultivate waste 

 lands because there was no necessity to do so. Even here, 

 when waste land was cultivated, the right of Government 

 was limited to taking the share recognized as its due in the 

 case of lands already under cultivation. On this point, Sir G. 

 Campbell in his Essay on Indian Land Tenures observes, " In 

 no part of India and under no form of Government did the 

 State undertake the latter functions (of letting lands at com- 

 petitive rents) or any others analogous to those of an English 

 landlord. Except in the assignment of waste land to be 

 cultivated on the customary temirsy there never was any sys- 

 tem of interference with the immediate possession of the soil ; 

 no letting it by competition or anything of that kind." 



82. The melvaram and kudivaram rights are thus the 

 two principal independent interests in 

 wa'^'rSh^tlpe'S: l^d, and all other interests are derived 

 ent rights and other from, or are Subordinate to, either the. 

 interests derived from one or the othcr. The ryot or ulkudi or 

 mirassidar was the receiver of the kudi- 

 varam, and he might cultivate the land himself or have it 

 cultivated by tenants in cases in which the Government share 

 of the produce left him a kudivaram which had a margin 

 above the cost of the cultivator's subsistence. The tenant put 

 in by the ryot was called a porakudi or stranger cultivator. 

 In exceptional cases, the poi-akudi was permitted to acquire 

 a beneficial interest in land and the status of an ul-porakudif 

 but this was Jiot recognized as a part of the general common 



