INTRODUCTION.
Ivii
their proof to the circumstances of a single year entailed intolerable injustice and hardship, and they were allowed to claim any rights of which their possession could be shown within the twolve _
years which preceded annexation. The strongest of their rights was to hold the whole village in perpetuity at a rent fixed by the courts, failing that, they might be decreed the sir lands] or nank^r allowances, such as have been described in the last chapter, their groves, their tanks, or their houses, manorial rights in waste lands, and the small dues which were levied by the proprietor from the lower classes of cultivators. It was afterwards considered that to constitute a body of middlemen who intercepted the passage of the rent from the actual cultivators to the men from whom Government realized its revenue was impolitic, and in 1866 an Act was passed demanding a strictness and comprehensiveness of proof for cases in which whole villages were claimed in sub-settlement, which made the majority of such claims practically hopeless of success ; at the same time, a few clauses were added which facilitated the establishment of rights in sir, and tended to maintain the zamindars in the possession of all the lands in their immediate occupation at the lowest rent compatible with the interests of the state. The same policy was followed in the Rent Act of 1868, which in one of its sections secured a right of occupancy in the fields ploughed by themselves to any ex-proprietors who had been unsuccessful under the former regulations. It has been seen that subordinate rights had been created, not only by long prescription, but in some parts of the province These contract substill more frequently by recent contract. proprietors based their title on deeds of what was known as hirt or shanhalap, granted them by the taluqdars for a valuable conTheir case never formed the subject of legislation, sideration. but was dealt with under the ordinary rules of civil law,* and such rights passing under their purchase were decreed them as they could prove to have been enjoyed vdthin the legal period of These sales in the northern districts constantly exlimitation. tended to whole villages in some cases, almost a whole pargana had been so conveyed and there, at any rate the middlemen who had been carefully guarded against when of the class of More frequently and old zamindars received full recognition. applied to small sales province the throughout the widely more of a class of small tenecreation and resulted in the land, plots of rent. of decree low rate at a under ments held The position of the ordinary cultivators soon received prominent notice and became the subject of a lengthy nvestigat'on,
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