VARIETIES OF METAYER RENT 43 



prevalent in these provinces, but it should be re- 

 membered that the names have not in all districts 

 exactly the same connotation : 



1. Batai: A division of the crop upon the threshing- 

 floor. The landlord's share varies from one-third and 

 two-fifths to one-half. 



2. Kankut : An estimation of the standing crop upon 

 which the share to be paid by the tenant in grain is 

 appraised. The custom is that the agents of the land- 

 lord visit the fields when the corn is ripe, and decide 

 that the produce will equal, say, 50 maunds of grain ; 

 the landlord's rent being one-half or two-fifths of the 

 gross produce, his share of the produce upon the field 

 will be 25 or 20 maunds. 



3. Amaldari : A term which I have not met with 

 out of Rohilkhand in this technical sense, but which 

 is a convenient method of distinguishing this par- 

 ticular development of kankut. Amaldari proceeds 

 upon a similar estimation of the standing crop, and a 

 further estimation of the cash value of the landlord's 

 share. Thus the landlord's share = two-fifths of a 

 crop of 50 maunds, or 20 maunds. The current price 

 of grain is supposed to be, let us say, 20 seers per 

 rupee — i.e., Rs. 2 per maund — and therefore the land- 

 lord's rent in cash = Rs. 40. 



These are all varieties of Metayer tenure, and the 

 working of this system in India is worth studying at 

 some length, partly because of its historical impor- 

 tance, and partly because it affords a fair opportunity 

 of testing Mill's saying, that 'when the partition is 

 a matter of fixed usage, not of varying convention, 

 political economy has no laws of distribution to in- 

 vestigate.' So far from this being the experience in 

 India, English observers have shown how unscru- 

 pulous landlords can, under any of the forms of the 

 metayer system, raise the rent to the utmost that the 

 tenant can pay, and can elude the restraint of custom 

 while pretending to observe it. Mr. E. Alexander, in 



