FKAGMENTATION OF HOLDINGS 67 



there is an arrangement for the heirs to take each 

 share, turn and turn about, so that the property 

 owned by each man in any plot of land amounts to 

 the right of temporary cultivation rather than the 

 ownership of the land. This custom of fragmenta- 

 tion, together with the Hindu law of inheritance, has 

 resulted in splitting up the land into an enormous 

 number of plots in which a large proportion of the 

 population have some share, however small. It 

 is not peculiar to India, but occurs also in France, 

 where the law of inheritance operates in the same 

 direction, and it is recorded * that in some parts of 

 France, the size of an individual share has been 

 reduced to a single vine or a single tuft of lucerne 

 grass. In Switzerland, also, in Japan and in parts 

 of Germany the evils of fragmentation have been very 

 marked. 



There is nothing new in this state of affairs in 

 India. Colonel Sleeman,f writing from the Nerbudda 

 tract in 1844, enlarges on the great evil which in 

 ryotwari tracts arises from the eternal subdivision of 

 land by the law of inheritance which gives each son 

 the same share. " Every holding," he says, " becomes 

 subdivided when the cultivating proprietor dies and 

 leaves more than one child, and as the whole face of 

 the country is open and without hedges, the division 

 is easily and speedily made. Thus the field-map 

 which fairly represents an estate one year will never 



* " Economie Rurale," by E. Jouzier, pp. 347 and 352. 

 f " Rambles and Recollections," by Colonel W. H. Sleeman, 1844. 



5* 



