1885.] 
J. Beames —On the Geography of India. 
165 
a very great difference between wliat the Subahdar had to receive from 
those below him, and what he had to pay to those above him ; such 
difference naturally going into his own pocket. Another object was to 
carve out for favourites and dependants new estates in various parts of 
the province without reducing to a corresponding extent the revenue 
demandable from the landholders whose estates were thus encroached 
upon and diminished. With this view a village here and a village there, 
a few bighas in one place and a few more in another, were created into 
an estate, the grantee of which had to pay a certain revenue, while the 
persons from whose estates these pilferings had been made still continued 
to pay their old rent, or at most a rent only slightly reduced. 
These tactics were followed by large proprietors in respect of their 
own estates, and in fact every one who was powerful enough to rob the 
State or his neighbours, robbed to his heart’s content. In addition 
to this constant spoliation and forcible transfer of estates, there was the 
unceasing resumption of rent-free tenures, and the creation of all sorts 
of fresh imposts, under the generic title of s'dir or “ remainder,” and 
other quaint technical names, mostly in order to provide an income for 
the various ranks of officials, or to meet some new extravagance of the 
Subahdar himself. Whosoever wishes to bewilder himself by an examina¬ 
tion of this extraordinary complication of revenue matters, may read 
Mr. J. Grant’s Analysis of the Finances of Bengal, and may wonder at, 
though he will probably not understand, the remarkable skill with which 
the writer disentangles the web of accounts, and produces as the result 
the “ Jama tashkhis bandobasti ” of A. D. 1765, on which the Perma¬ 
nent Settlement was based. With the Permanent Settlement the curtain 
falls on the subject; and from that time to the present all is darkness. 
I now proceed to the details of this Subah. It contained seven 
Sarkars, viz .:— 
Biliar. Hajipiir. 
Mungir. Saran. 
Champ aran. Tirhut. 
Ruhtas. 
Comprising 199 mahals or parganahs. The total revenue is given 
in the introductory remarks as dams 22, 19, 19, 404 of which dams 17, 
26, 81, 779 are from nakdi , and dams 4, 92, 37, 630 sayurghal. These 
figures, however, do not agree with the result obtained by adding together 
the revenue of each of the seven Sarkars as given in the lists which 
follow the introduction. The total of the figures for the Sarkars is 
dams 38, 51, 18, 242.* As regards the area no definite statement can 
# See Thomas’s Pathan kings of Delhi, p. 388, for a discussion as to the accu¬ 
racy of Abul Fazl’s figures. 
