1839.] Report on the District of Azimgurh. 99 



4Gth. We will proceed to consider separately the three classes of 

 tenures mentioned above. First, those where the proprietary right 

 rests in a single individual. 



47th. All these are evidently liable to partition under the existing 

 laws, in the course of the succeeding generations. The vesting of the 

 entire right in an individual is rather incidental than natural to the 

 tenure, and yet deserves special notice, because it is generally created 

 in a way that brings with it special rights and relations. The sole 

 proprietors of villages are mostly those who have purchased them at 

 public sale for arrears of revenue, or under decrees of Court, or by 

 private contract. 



48th. Purchasers by public auction, on account of arrears of rent, 

 must be held to have become possessed of all of what is commonly 

 termed the Zemindarry right. From the cultivated land they may 

 collect the established and fair rates : of the uncultivated land they have 

 the entire disposal. The Sayer, including the Phulkur, the Bunhur, 

 the Julhur, and whatever Zemindarry cesses are levied in the village, 

 of right belong to them, as does also the whole of the timber, which 

 is not the personal property of the resident who planted it, or his heir. 

 With the former non-proprietary cultivators the relations of the pur- 

 chaser are well defined. He steps into the place of the former 

 proprietors, and is entitled to collect whatever they used to collect 

 before. From the old proprietors he is entitled to demand for their 

 Seer the average rate paid in the village, or its neighbourhood, for 

 similar land, by similar classes of cultivators, though this may be some 

 times difficult to determine immediately. 



49th. An individual may have become possessed of a village under 

 sale in satisfaction of decrees of Court, and this is more frequently the 

 case than might be expected, even where the former proprietors were 

 numerous. A wealthy and intriguing man who once gets a footing in 

 a village will soon contrive to bring the interests of all the others to 

 sale, and by purchasing them, become himself the sole proprietor. The 

 right thus acquired is evidently more absolute than where it rests on 

 sale for arrears of revenue, though the latter gives the better title. 

 The latter absolutely transfers only the Zemindarry right, guaranteed 

 by the State against all other claimants; the former gives the whole of 

 the rights and interests of the persons whose estates were sold, but 

 liable to challenge by any other claimants. In the latter case, the old 

 proprietors retain their rights as cultivators ; in the former, they lose 

 them, and sink to the ranks of mere tenants at will. 



50th. Purchases under special contract are of course ruled by the 

 terms of the contract ; but here, as well as in the case of sales under 



