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Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 4, p. 205.

LAND REVENUE 205 To appreciate the question of Indian land revenue, therefore, the Englishman must put himself into a social environment entirely different from that with which he is acquainted at home. His political and economic preconceptions will also require considerable readjustment. The place, for instance, which is occupied by the land tax in English finance is very small, the receipts amounting to less than I per cent. of the total public income ; whereas in India the land revenue provides more than 23 per cent. of the whole income of the state and nearly 39 per cent. of the revenue proper. The system, moreover, of tenures and titles to land in the British Isles is so unique, and there is so little in England corresponding to the peasant holdings or to the 'cadastre' of continental nations, that an English in- quirer approaches the land problems of India from a stand- point even more remote than that of the inhabitants of the greater part of the rest of Europe. He is apt also, if he pushes his investigations far, to be appalled by the amount of official literature to be studied on the subject and the esoteric character of the language in which much of it is written. Indian histories, too, while recording the names of celebrated soldiers and diplo- matists, seldom mention those of men who, like Shore, Duncan, Munro, Thomason, and Wingate, have by their labours in the department of Indian land revenue profoundly influenced the welfare of many generations throughout vast tracts of country, and whose work must always retain for Indian administrators a great deal both of interest and importance. It is at the same time most difficult to satisfy the wants of an Difficulty outside inquirer by presenting in limited space a conspectus of attending general Indian land revenue administration which shall be at once descrip- illuminating and accurate. To every general statement there tion of -Z3~~~~ . _ Indian are numerous exceptions; and a pronouncement which is true land as regards one Province or District can seldom be accepted revenue without modification for other parts of the country. There are systems. no doubt certain principles and methods which in a general way underlie the various systems in force, and it is the object of the following pages to present these as clearly as possible; but in the perusal of what is here written it cannot be too care- fully borne in mind that the actual details of revenue work are characterized by a variety and intricacy which no general description, much less an account as succinct as the present must be, can in any way hope to reproduce. The land revenue of modern India is a form of public income Land derived from the immemorial custom of the country. In its revelnue primary form the land revenue was that portion of the cultivator's native rule,