REVENUE BOARD, in British India, in Calcutta and Madras, a Board of three members who superintend the revenues of the country. There is no Revenue Boanl in Bombay, but there are two Revenue Conunissioners, between whom the collectorates are divided, and who correspond immediately with Government, and are also Police Commissioners of their respective divisions.
During the occupation of India by the British, the land revenues have been superintended by its 1 ablest officers ; for even yet it is one of the three chief items to meet the expenditure, the other two being from salt and opium. In the south of India, at the close of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, Sir Thomas Munro reported .at length on the land revenue ; and in Northern India, reports on the settlement of the land revenue in the North-Western Provinces, under the thirty years' regulation ix. of 1833, were drawn up by men, many of whom obtained a name for them selves BE administrators. Thomason reported on his settlement of Azimgarh, Edward Thornton on Saharunpur and Muzaffarnagar, H. M. Elliot on
Meerut, John Thornton on Aligarh; R. Money on Moradabad, R. H. P. Clarke on Rudaon, W. J. Conolly on Bareilly, J. IV. Muir on Shahjahanpur, G. F. Edmonstone on Minpuri, C. G. Mansel on Agra, M. R. Gubbius on Etawa, H. Rose and W. Muir on Cawnpur, R. Montgomery on Allahabad, and E. A. Reade on Gorakhpur. Garhwal and Karnaon were reported on by J. H. Batten, Debra Doon by A. Ross, Hamirpur by C. Allen, and. the Calpee Parganas by W. Muir. Traces remain of the office of lord of a thousand villages, described in Menu as the head of the Hindu revenue system, but chiefly in the Dekhan and other southern parts. These are called in Maharashtra, Sir-Des mukh, their districts are called Sirkar or Front, and their hereditary register is the Sir-Despandi. Below the pargana division is the lordship of ten or twenty towns, called Naikwari, Tarmf, etc., and the chain ends with individual villages.