________________
NOVEMBER, 1911.)
EARLY SOUTH INDIAN FINANCE
285
other services; in monopolizing the produce of the several villages, which they afterwards disposed of at an advanced price; and in applying to their own use the allowances and requisites of the pagodas and village servants, by which the parties were deprived of their rights, or the inhabitants, as was often the case, were obliged to make good the loss." "They also secured for themselves, either for tillage or pasture, the best lands of the village. Thus the mass of the people were ground down, nothing beyond a bare subsistence left them, and improvement in their condition was impossible,"43 An equally harrowing picture is drawn by Colonel Fullerton, who was Commander of the Southern Army of the Coromandel Coast during the years 1782-4, of the southern districts under the management of these wretched "inferior instruments (the renters) who are eager to perpetuate oppression, and to enforce unusual measures by unprecedented means. "4 In these circumstances it would be nothing less than strange if the Nawab's officers did not take what they chose for the Government sbare. Even if they wanted authority of a written test they would have found one in the Hedaia which states, "The learned in the law allege that the utmost extent of tribute is one half of the actual product, nor it is allowable to exact more. Bat the taking of a ball is no more than strict justice and is not tyrannical, because, as it is lawful to take the whole of the person and property of infidels and distribute them among the Musselmans, it follows that taking half their incomes is lawful a fortiori, 95 It is, however, more than doubtful if ever they consciously acted on the principle so openly asserted as that, for their radical defect was not so much a system founded upon avarice and cruelty but the lack of any system whatsoever that was compatible with good government. The effect was, however, all the same. The State share was in theory one half of the gross produce, 57 and the collection was farmed out to unscrupulous renters, who as the biggest bidders, bad every inducement to fleece the poor cultivators as much as they could, BO Touch so that the latter deemed themselves, fortunate if they held back stealthily bare subsistence for themselves. "The renters preferred to a moderate and fixed money rent, a large share of the crop, which by extortion they could increase, and which they could realise more easily than a proportionate money rent; while the ryots, as they afterwards often showed when the proportionate money rent was introduced, preferred a system, under which by deceiving the renter and abstracting the prodace, they could easily secure better terms for themselves." 8 Renters on the coast," says Colonel Fullerton, “have not scrupled to imprison reputable farmers, and inflict on them extreme severity of punishment, for refusing to accept of sizleen in the hundred as the portion out of which they were to maintain a family, to furnish stock and implements of husbandry, cattle, feed, and all expenses incident to the cultivation of their lands." Thus, in the present North Arcot district the rapacity of the renters had been so great that it was only in a few jagir villages that the ryots got their full proportion oi odram, while in Givernment villages sometimes the whole produce had been seized by the renters or the Nawab's servants. In others, the cultivators received one to three parts ont of ten, instead of the customary four or five. Their share was in fact often. "only what they could conceal or make away with."89 In Trichinopoly, as a general rule, the crops were equally divided between the Nawab's government and the onltivators, after a deduction of 5 per cent of the gross produce had been made for reaping expenses. But, since the allowances, paid to the village establishment, which varied from 23 10 28 per cent of the
* Vellore D. Manual, 484.
# Loc. cit., 248-252. See also Chingleput District Mamal, 231. # Hodeia, Dk. IX, chap. 7. quoted in Wilks' Historical Sketches, 101-102. "This text was written in the sixth century of Hijera, and had undoubtedly boen," says Wilke, "the chief rule of action since that period."
* Sir Thomas Munro rejecte, after a lengthy argument, the view that assessments were low under ancient Hindu Governments and were rained by Muhammadan ralers. See bis Minute on the State of the Country and the Condition of the People. Arbathnot's Munro, I, 287-75.
" Col. Fullerton, a contemporary of the times, is explicit on this point. So his Vieno, 219. M M , C. S." in the Nellore Dt. Massal, 477.
North Arcot District Manual, 1, 119
