gp ON ORISSA PROPER 



may have been their number anciently, they are now too few and unimport- 

 ant to claim a particular notice. The ryoti land, paying a fall rent to the 

 sovereign, demands our principal attention. According to the uniforni 

 system of India generally, it was partitioned into numerous gfctms, town- 

 ships, or village societies. The larger revenue allotments or circles of 

 villages known to the Hindus of Orissa, were denominated Khand and 

 JBisi or Bishe ; words meaning literally a portion or district. Each of 

 these petty districts was under the management and controul of two de- 

 scriptions of hereditary officers, vested with police and revenue functions, 

 mz. the Khand Adipati and Bishuya or Bissoee, (words signifying chief of 

 a division,) who was the principal man; and the Bho'i Mul of the Ka- 

 ran or writer cast, who had the more particular charge ofkeepingallthe ac- 

 counts and registers connected with the land. In parts of the Deccan, the 

 same description of officers still exist, and are called the Des Mukh and Des 

 Pandiah, terms of precisely corresponding import. They seem to have acted 

 jointly in the discharge of some of their functions, and separately and in- 

 dependently in regard to others. One perhaps had the more especial 

 duty of administering the police, the other of collecting the revenue ; whilst 

 they both watched generally over the fiscal interests of the state, and acted 

 as umpires and moderators of Punchaits, in investigating and adj listing 

 disputes between inhabitants of different villages, or between the people of 

 a village and their head man. Every respectable village had its chief and 

 accountant, called the Padhan and Bho'i — but frequently several of the 

 smaller hamlets of Orissa were associated together under one set of offi- 

 cers of this name ; much oftener the same individual performed both func- 

 tions in a village ; and sometimes none of the kind existed, in which case 

 the charge of the village affairs attached more immediately to the division 

 officer. Where the Padhan and Bho'i both existed, they discharged res- 

 pectively much the same duty in regard to their individual village or vil- 

 lages, as the superior officers exercised in regard to their circle of villages. 

 The Padhan looked after the police with the aid of the village watch- 

 man, who made his reports to a Sirdar or Sirdars called the Of Khan- 



