Emperor’s Chief Revenue Officer (Díwán), Mír Muhammad Sádik. This document was perfectly regular: it particularized the lands held under it, and fixed their assessment at Rs. 222,958, according to the asl Jamá Túmárí, or original crown rent, as fixed for the Governorship of Bengal by Mír Jafar Murshid Kulí Khán in A.D. 1722. In order, however, to give their tenure additional permanence, the Company in 1765 obtained a Farmán, or Letters Patent, direct from the Emperor himself, confirming the grant of the 24 Parganás Zamíndárí made by the Nawáb Mír Jafar and the Díwán Mír Muhammad Sádik. The Emperor’s deed, however, went further, and converted the grant into an áltamghá, which gave a perpetual heritable jurisdiction over the land. This vested in the Company the same administrative rights in the 24 Parganás as over the territories of Bardwán and Chittagong, first ceded in 1760, and which, together with the Revenue Administration (Diwání) of all Lower Bengal, were finally in that year, 1765, transferred for ever to the Company.
The essential legal object of these various charters was to confer upon the Company the Khidmat, or official duties and powers of an Indian Zamíndár, over the 24 Parganás. But it must be borne in mind that the grants did not confer the full proprietary lordship in the soil. This difficulty, however, had in one sense been obviated on the 13th July 1759, by a jágír sanad granted to Lord Clive for services rendered to the Delhi Emperor, especially in aiding in the suppression of a rebellion headed by the Emperor’s eldest son, Sháh Alam. By this deed, all the royalties, dues, and rents collected by the Company as official landholder, and paid by it into the public treasury of the Muhammadan Government, were made over to Lord Clive; thus placing the Company somewhat in a state of dependence to their own servant. This Deed of Gift passed under the Seal of the Emperor, and Lord Clive was enrolled among the nobility (mansabdárs and umrás) of the Delhi Empire, with the title of Shash-hazárí, panj hazár Sawár, or Commander of Six Thousand (personal), and Five Thousand Horse. Lord Clive’s claims to the property as feudal suzerain were contested in England in 1764; and on the 23d June 1765, when he returned to Bengal, a new Deed was issued, confirming the unconditional jágír to Lord Clive for ten years, with reversion afterwards to the Company in perpetuity, under similar powers. This Deed received the Emperor’s sanction on the 12th August 1765, and thus gave absolute legal validity to the Act of Assignment in favour of Lord Clive, and eventually transferred
