OF KAMAON". I77 



expiration of a given term of years; most commonly it was reserved indefinite- 

 ly. The landed proprietors, however, ever evince the most tenacious attach- 

 ment to their estates, whatever be their extent, and never voluntarily alienate 

 them, except under circumstances of extreme necessity. This, joined to the 

 repeated family partitions arising under the Hindu law of inheritance, has 

 reduced landed property throughout the country to the most minute state of 

 subdivision. 



The intersection of the country in every point by rivers, would have af- 

 forded prominent boundaries for local division, had the state of government 

 been originally such as to admit of the establishment or continuance of a re- 

 gular arrangement of that nature, but the existence of numerous petty 

 principalities, the chiefs of which were engaged in constant aggressions on 

 each other, necessarily led to frequent changes in the division of the country, 

 as the conquered villages, in receiving a new master, were incorporated in his 

 own district, or formed into a separate pergunna, under some new name. 

 The ultimate union of the country under one monarch, produced no re- 

 medy, as tlie distribution which took place among the feudal tenants of the 

 crown, led only to a multiplication of subdivisions, without producing order 

 in their demarcation. Every new grant to these military chiefs tended to 

 further perplexities, as from that moment, the villages in the grant, whatever 

 might be their actual situation, became an integral part of the district in 

 which the previous assessment of the grantee lay. Various services of 

 the state, which were provided for by allotments of country, gave their 

 names to such districts. Thus, two lots of villages dispersed over the whole 

 province appropriated to the gun-powder manufactory and magazine, formed 

 the pergunnas of Silkhana, and Mahruri ; while a line of villages, extend- 

 ing from the snowy mountains to Almora, was known as a separate 

 division, under the designation of Hiun Pal, being appointed for the supply 

 of snow to the Raja's court. These incongruities ceased in a great 



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