revenue. Theoretically, they were removable at pleasure; but they were generally permitted to remain for generation after generation in possession of their estates. They were often charged with the raising of local troops, who were consequently devoted to them, and during the lax administration of the later years of Musalman rule they had become so powerful that they had usurped hereditary rights and come to regard themselves as the legal owners of the soil. They maintained the semblance of state, residing in mud forts in which their palaces were situated, moving abroad only on elephants or in gorgeous palanquins, and being accompanied on their excursions by a rabble of armed peons and a posse of relatives and followers mounted on horses or borne in palanquins. Their practice was to exact by force or fraud all the revenue they could, to pay a certain fixed sum to the Government, and to appropriate the balance themselves. The Chief and Council of Masulipatam treated these zamindars as the owners of their estates, subject to the payment of a money peshkash to Government which was settled from time to time on what was called the mámúl jamabandi, i.e., a customary sum assessed on no scientific basis. The havili land was kept under direct management as in the time of the Musalmans.
The zamindars undoubtedly oppressed their ryots. The 'ancient established custom' of collecting the revenue in the zamindari land was by a division of the crop (ásará), but in practice several different modes were adopted by the zamindars.1[1] In some cases the crop was shared; in others, particularly on the more fertile soils producing paddy, there was a fixed rent; and garden land, or land producing tobacco, cotton, betel, sugar-cane, oilseeds, palmyra or fruit trees, was assessed on special principles. Where the paddy crop was divided between the zamindar and the ryot, the division was theoretically supposed to leave the cultivator 40, 50 or 60 per cent, of the crop, the higher rates being allowed to Bráhmans and other favoured classes. But as a matter of fact the cultivator's share rarely exceeded 20 or 25 per cent. The fixed rents were also maintained at an oppressively high level.
The havili land appears to have been managed on a somewhat similar system, a renter being substituted for a zamindar. Division of the crop was more common, but arbitrary assessments called sist and malavati were in some places substituted in its stead. Here again however it was the
- ↑ 1 See the reports of 1786 and 1787 of the Committee of Circuit referred to below.
