142 Appendix. 



Though the usual fare of the cultivator in the hands of the fafwart 

 is the spider and fly business, yet when the tenant has the good fortune 

 to be situated where the power for weal or woe has been rescued from 

 patwari and zemindar alike, and is in the hands of the European 

 middleman, the Behar Indigo Planter, the patwarfs accounts which 

 have done for the cultivator assume a certain degree of regularity, and 

 tolerable order is evolved out of chaos. The honest, truth-loving, 

 masterful Englishman has done, by his immediate and continuous 

 contact with the ryot, what empiric and intangible law could never 

 f.o ; he has frightened the pativari into order. This has, however, 

 not been done without worry and head work, for it is only one prepared 

 to martyrize himself in unravelling the sinuosities of the basta (of the 

 pat-war? s accounts) who can hope to do much. 



In different localities the difficulty experienced in mastering the 

 patwar?s accounts differ in degree. There are places where it was 

 quite possible for the manager or assistant of a factory to have his 

 village and land accounts literally at his finger's end, and that without 

 mental strain or bodily exertion. Various reasons may be assigned 

 for this facility, such as provincial and local custom, &c. ; but the 

 most prevalent cause will be found in the system adopted, improved, 

 and handed down by former managers. 



If the patwari of Behar is compared with his brother official of the 

 Eastern districts of the North-West Provinces, the comparison is not 

 favourable to the latter. In Bengal, the patwariskip may, or may 

 not, be hereditary. In the North-West Provinces, the office goes by 

 strict entail failing heirs direct to the nearest of kin. 



In Behar, the pativari is nominally the Government village account- 

 ant, really the servant of the zemindar, by whom he is paid and dis- 

 missed at will ; in the North-West Provinces, he is quite independent 

 of anybody whilst living miles away ; the local administration cannot 

 exercise any efficient control over him. He occupies the best jote or 

 plot of ground in the village or villages of which he is patwari* 

 Owing to the system obtaining in the North-West of numbering each 

 field and all cultivable or non-cultivable land in every village (such 

 numbers being shown upon the nuksha or map, the names of the 

 tenants being also entered opposite the numbers in the khesrah or 

 index) the pativari, who is, per se, not entitled by law to acquire land 

 in his official capacity, finds the names of brothers, wives, cousins 

 come handy to serve his purpose, though that purpose may be in direct 



