16 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Thanjavur is pre-eminently a district of large landlords. Early British accounts of Thanjavur note that it had the most unequal distribution of land in the southern region. In 1800, the Collector of Thanjavur pointed out that a single large landowner could corner the grain market in an entire taluk.l Each extensive property was held by a prominent mirasdar. British Gazetteers write that he could hold between 3,000 to 4,000 acres, not necessarily in one consolidated holding but distributed in plots of different sizes scattered over different villages and even in different taluks.2 This feature of extensive landholdings dominated the social structure of the countryside and primarily determined the condition of the peasantry. Early Communal Ownership In Thanjavur, the evolution of rights in property had taken the form of jointly held property by a group of mirasdars. It has been argued that in its initial stage of development, the entire holding, arable and waste, of the village was held in a manner in which the principle of communal ownership was expressed.3 The lands were held and cultivated in common and the produce was then divided among the landowners after paying the dues of the government and the village servants, who were paid by the 'village community9 (the mirasdars as a body). A possibly later development was a qualified form of communal ownership in which all rights over waste and reclaimed land were held in common, but the arable lands were distributed permanently. All rights and privileges accruing to the dominant group in the village were associated with and exercised by the group in common. While the specificities of the evolution of property rights in Thanjavur must be analysed in detail, these aspects have been emphasised to draw attention to the historical tendency in Thanjavur towards the existence of a unified landowning group in the villages, which exercised rights of property and social rights over the peasantry. Joint villages with communal land tenures predominated in the wet lands in Thanjavur. In 1805, out of 5783 villages 1774 were jointly held; in 2202 villages the landlords held the arable land separately, but shared the other rights; and in 1807 villages there were individual landowners.4 The tenacity of this tendency was remarkable. Even in 1921, it was recorded that there were still villages in Thanjavur where land was periodically redistributed.6 The consolidation of colonial rule in India fundamentally affected the structure of Indian society and the directions in