LAND. According to Menu, cultivated land is the property of him who cut away the wood, or who cleared and tilled it, and this ordinance is binding on all the Hindu race, which uo inter national wars or conquests has overturned. At present, in British India,— Oadh has great zamindars, almost complete owners, with few subordinate rights ; tenant right was found non-existent, but has since been conceded to old proprietors, a limited class.
The N. TV. Provinces has moderate proprietors ; the old ryOts have fixity of tenure at a fair rent.
The Panjab, very small and very numerous proprietors ; old ryots have a measure of fixity of tenure at fair rates.
In Bengal are great zamindars, whose rights are limited. Numerous sub-proprietors of several grades under them, with ancient ryots who have fixed tenure and fixed rents, and other old ryots who have fixity of tenure at a fair variable from time to time.
The Central Provinces has moderate proprietors with ancient ryots, who are sub-proprietors of their holdings at rents fixed for the term of each settlement. Other old ryots have fixity of tenure at a fair rent. Ryots are complete proprietors of the soil, subject only to payment of revenue.
Sir William Muir says that the British found the lands of India owned or managed in three different ways, viz. a. ryot occupancy or pro prietorship ; h. official zamindarship ; and c. village proprietorship.
The first of these signifies that the ryot is the hereditary occupant or bolder of his own individual holding. The last, village proprietorship, signifies that one or more persons, or a body of co-par ceners, possess proprietary right over all the land (including waste) contained within the boundary of • their village or estate ; village pro prietors may be either talukdars, zamindars, or pattidars, or members of a proprietary or culti vating brotherhood. In a general sense, it may be stated that on the British obtaining possession of the empire of India, they found ryot proprietor ship provailiog in the south of India,. official zamindarship in Bengal, and village proprietorship in the N.W. Provinces. The zamindar of Bengal was nothing more than a manager ; or, if he laid claim to the ownership, the title was shared between him and the ryot. It is far otherwise in the N.W. Provinces and in Oudh. In both of these the village landlord, whether talukdar or zamindar, is owner. of the soil. The cultivating ryot was distinctly regarded as cultivating the lands of another. He appears nowhere to have claimed the right of occupying the fields he cultivated longer than be cultivated them.
Among the 3fahratta communities, the whole land of a village is designated Sewar, being con tained within the village sew or boundary ; Wawur,, cultivated or arable land ; Tika, a parcel, a field ; Shet, a field ; and Purtim, a field of con venient length ; Mullai, garden or meadow land ; Kuruu, preserved grass laud ; Gairan, pasture land ; Gutkoli or '1"hul, or field of an extinct family.
Menu, on the principle that the state is the sole owner of the entire land of the country, says there is to be a lord of a single village, a lord of ten, a lord of one hundred, and a lord of a thousand towns, all to be appointed by the king. Each is to report all offences, etc., to his immediate superior. The compensation for a lord of one town is the provisions and other articles to which the king is entitled from that town ; that of a lord of ten villages, two ploughs of land ; the lord of a hundred villages is to have the land of a small village ; and of a thousand, that of a small town.
All ancient legislators, especially Moses, grounded the success of their ordinances con cerning virtue, justice, and morality upon securing hereditary estates, or at least landed property, to the greatest possible number of citizens.
The most prominent feature of the tenure of land throughout the Peninsula is that the soil is everywhere held by small farmers not ranking above labourers. When the British became masters of the country, they retained this system, but gradually moderated the revenue demand. Later on they attempted to establish landlords in some parts of India, in the hope that they would perform the functions of English and Scotch landlords, but this hope has not been realized, and the people have been worse rack-rented under this plan than under the native governments. In other parts of the country they made the peasantry proprietors, who, not understanding-the boon, sold themselves to usurers, so that their last state has beconie worse than the first. According to the ancient Indian practice, an area of land is often named after the quantity of seed required to sow it, or the quantity it will produce, and of course the actual area differs according to the opinion of the person who makes the estimate. Where linear definition is given, mention is made of rods or ropes, of so many cubits, but the cubit is unde fined, and areas of the same denomination are derived from different multiples of the rod or rope. Of the more definite terms, the bigha prevails in Bengal and the N.W. Provinces. In Bengal it is 1600 square yards, and in the N.W. Provinces it is 3025 square yards. In the Bombay Presidency it is not authoritatively defined, but averages about I of an acre. The term is quite unknown in the Madras Presidency, where the authorized measure is the cawnio of 57,600 square feet, or 1.3223 acre ; there are also other local land measures defined, but presenting great differ ences one from the other, as the chain of 3-64 acres, the seed-cottah of 1'62 acre, the vaylie of G•G acres, and the bullah of acres.—Elphin stone, Mt. of India, ii. p. 39 ; Niebuhr. See Weights and Measures.