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Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 21, p. 362.

362 SAGAING DLSTRICT enough food as a general rule to prevent a famine. A drought, how- ever, is bound to occasion at least local scarcity; and in x891-2 it was found necessary, owing to a failure of crops, to open Famine. relief works and spend about Rs. 9,boo in helping the inhabitants of the affected tracts. Scarcity was threatened towards the end of 1903, but some opportune showers in September saved the situation. The District can never be wholly free from a calamity such as seemed imminent in 1903, but its communications; by both land and water, are so ample that the distress need never assume alarming proportions. For administrative purposes the District is divided into two subdivi- sions: Sagaing, comprising the SAGAING and TADA-U townships; Administration. and Myinmu, comprising the MYINMU, CHAUNGU, MYAUNG, and NGAZUN townships. The subdivisions and townships are under the usual executive officers, assisted by 389 village headmen, to 29 of whom have been given special criminal powers under the Upper Burma Village Regulation, and to 46 special civil powers under the same enactment. At head-quarters are a treasury officer, an akunwun (in subordinate charge of the revenue), and a superintendent of land records, with a staff of 8 inspectors and 8o surveyors. There are no superior Forest and Public Works officers in the District, which forms a portion of the`Mu Forest division and constitutes a subdivision of the Shwebo Public Works division. The subdivisional and township officers preside in the respective subdivisional and township courts (civil and criminal), but the Sagaing township officer is assisted in his civil duties by the head-quarters magistrate, who is ex-ofdo additional judge of the township court. Crime is of the ordinary type, and there is a good deal of litigation in the District. During the last, years of Burmese rule the revenue consisted of tha- thameda and a land tax at the rate of one-fourth of the gross produce, `assessed by thamadis (specially selected village elders), and paid in money at the market rate ; but the greater part of the lands were held by members of the royal family or by servants' of the government, and were not assessed. At annexation the existing revenue system was con- tinued and applied to all state land, an exception being made in the case of certain wuttugan-or religious lands which paid preferential rates of one-eighth or one-tenth of the gross produce. On non-state lands .a ,water rate was levied on irrigated land only. Settlement operations wire commenced in 1893 and completed in x9oo, the rates proposed being first levied in the agricultural year 1903-4. On inundated land cold-season rice is now assessed at from Rs. 1-8 to Rs. 3-6 per acre, .mayin (hot-season) rice at from R. i to Rs. 3, and kaing crops (onions, beans, &c.) at from R. 1 to Rs. 5-4 per acre. Wheat pays from 6 annas