(8)
ing that is guessed at, or drawn by lot. When ie enol esaanst es his oan he knows his land and what it ought to yield, and it is only the subsequent treatment of the land that puts it above rates. A kurmi{ gets a dry bit of land and digs a well and makes of it a garden, and thrives, and the landlord steps in and demands a share. Such a field has ac- wired an adventitious value due to capital and labour, while another of land equally good, has acquired nothing but what nature has freely supplied. The servant who held it has buried his talent in a napkin.
20. There may be no rates, but the farmer and the cultivator talk in rates. So much a bigha for the land near the village, so much for the land farther off This h4r will produce Re. 1 per bigha, that hdr only four annas. Kachhiéna lands are al- ways treated to a rate. Brahmans and Thékurs are generally rated with reference to their caste.
21. Inobserving.a uniformity in the rates, I Aave always been referred to the position of the land in the village with respect to the home- stead, and this probably lies at the bottom of all rents, which are modified chiefly by the caste of the cultivators, and the lengths to which the landlords may wish or dare to go.
22. I think Mr. Maconochie’s plan most simple, and if, Reliability of returned 1m all cases, the rent of certain lands in rents. the village was a measure of the value of the rest, that it could not fail to command success ; for, as a rule, I believe that true returns are given relating to money rents, though often much of the land is returned at nominal rates, from the inclusion of it in his sir by the zamindar, or in the Brahmans’ mu’éfi holdings, and much of it again is re- turned as paying rents in kind.
23. It is to lands of the latter class that any deduced rent-rate has to be applied with care.
For there are, in most villages, more or less extensive according as the custom of payment of rent in kind prevails, large tracts of outlying unirrigable lands where land is held on payments in kind. The extent of the land thus held is too a nee to merit any but careful treatment. They are bad lands—while in some years they pay, in others they fail altogether—they are held by péhikéshts, who throw them into the rest of their holdings on the chance of their turning out
General allusion to rates.
Basis of rates.
Baté,i lands.
