104 MALAY LAND TENURE. 



This passage indicates the existence of a class of sub-tenants 

 subordinate to a proprietor, and that the tenant right of these 

 people includes fixity of tenure may be gathered from the fact 

 that a refractory tenant is liable to fine only. There is no 

 hint of eviction. The peasant cultivator, or sub- tenant, who 

 enters into occupation of the land of another, with his consent 

 (unqualified as to time), acquires, therefore, a proprietary right, 

 subject to the right of the other to a share in the produce of 

 the laud, and subject to the liability of being fined if he does 

 not obey his feudal superior. 



Thus one proprietary right may spring up within another, 

 and this may go on ad infinitum ; in Bengal, since the permanent 

 settlement, as many as eighteen and twenty distinct rights may 

 sometimes be discoverable between the Zaminddr and cultiva- 

 tor. So among the Malays a man who, by his personal indus- 

 try, or by the co-operation of his family and slaves, or by 

 inheritance, finds himself in possession of more land than he 

 wishes to cultivate, can, by admitting sub-tenants, secure himself 

 an annual return, in kind, of grain or fruit, besides adding to 

 his importance by the acquisition of a number of neighbours 

 who are bound to recognise his superior proprietary rights and 

 to obey him on pain of fine. The first proprietor who, as was 

 stated at the outset, is bound to keep up continuous occupa- 

 tion or cultivation, performs this duty vicariously in the 

 persons of his sub-tenants, and they again, if they choose, 

 create fresh sub-tenancies on the same system. 



If cultivation, or the payment of the tenth, ceases on the 

 part of the tenant for a period prescribed by custom (See supra 

 p. 77) his tenant right lapses. 



This is the explanation of the decision in the case of Abdul- 

 latif v. Mahomed Meera Lebe tried in Malacca in 1829. The 

 plaintiff, who brought an action to recover possession of a piece 

 of land, was non-suited. Apparently he was a proprietor who 

 had admitted a sub-tenant on the customary agreement to pay 

 one-tenth of the produce, and he desired to regard this as a 

 tenancy terminable at the will of the proprietor. But the 

 Court upheld the right of the sub-tenant, or cultivator, to 

 fixity of tenure as long as the land was kept in cultivation and 

 the tenth paid. (See Appendix, III, p. xxxvi.) 



