100 MALAY LAND TENURE. 



Sir Emerson Tennent, in his account of Ceylon, though he 

 describes the manner in which the tenth is collected there under 

 British Colonial rule,* does not state how, if at all, this varies 

 from the practice which obtained under the native administra- 

 tion, but I find a very full description of the collection of a 

 tithe on grain in an Asiatic kingdom in Moura's Le Royaume 

 de Cambodge, which is interesting as shewing the extreme 

 elaborateness of the procedure found necessary. It is instruc- 

 tive to compare the published descriptions of the efforts made 

 during the last fifty or sixty years to collect the Malacca land 

 revenue, one long history of want of knowledge on one side, 

 and fraud and evasion on the other, shewing iC how cruelly the 

 1 subject has been neglected and mismanaged/'f with what this 

 author is able to state as regards Cambodia, " no difficulty or 

 1 delay is ever experienced in getting in this tax " ! 



" The rice-harvest is gathered between November and January, 

 ■ according to the forwardness of the crops. Towards the 

 c month of January, the King sends out into each province an 

 ' envoy, who is the bearer of a royal order conferring on him 

 ' the right of estimating the rice-crops realised by the owners, 

 1 and of deciding the portion due to the State, that is to say, 

 1 a tenth of the gross produce. The envoy is always ac- 

 ' companied on this mission by an agent of the Storekeeper- 

 ' general of Phnom Penh. They proceed together to the 

 ' province which has been assigned to them, and exhibit their 

 1 credentials to the Governor. On sight of the King's seal, 

 ' the Governor prostrates himself three times ; he at once 

 ' causes candles and joss-sticks to be lighted and places them 

 ' on the ground in front of him, and he then listens, lying on 

 ' his face, to the reading of the royal edict. He himself at 

 ' once draws up instructions to the various employes of his 

 ' province, so that the task of the envoys from the capital may 

 ' be facilitated everywhere and that the reception to which 

 ' they are entitled may be accorded to them. Lastly, the 

 ' Governor nominates from among the local authorities a third 

 ' delegate, who forms one, ex-officio, of the committee of 

 ' measurement. This delegate represents the interest of the 



* Tennent's Ceylon, II, 170. 



f Blundell— Journ. Ind. Arch., II, 741. 



