300 THANA DLSTRICT
The administration of justice is under the District and Sessions
judge, whose jurisdiction, except during the monsoon months, includes
Kolaba District. He is assisted by one Assistant and six Subordinate
Judges. There are altogether 31 officers to administer criminal justice.
The commonest offences are theft and house-breaking. Offences under
the Railway Act, which are tolerably frequent, are tried by the Assistant
Collector in charge of Bassein, Dahanu, and Salsette, as railway
magistrate.
Besides the regular survey tenure common to the Presidency, a
considerable number of villages, chiefly in the Salsette taluka, are held
on the khoti tenure. The khots, who are leaseholders of a certain
number of villages, obtained their land from the British Government at
an early period of its rule. Another kind of leasehold tenure, known
as izdfat; is found in most parts of the District, and is a variety of the
service tenure of hereditary officials. The lands are now held on the
survey tenure, the izdfatddr having a position analogous to that of
superior holders. Other lands, lying either on the coast or along the
larger creeks, are held on the shilotri tenure. Shilotri lands are those
which have been reclaimed from the sea and embanked, and of which
the permanence is dependent on the embankments being kept up.
These reclamations are known as khdrs. The tenure is of three
sorts. First, shilotri proper, under which the khdr belongs to the
person by whom it was reclaimed. The shilotridars are considered
to have a proprietary right ; they let out their lands at will, and, accord-
ing to old custom, levy a maund of rice per bigha, in addition to the
assessment for the repair of the outer embankments. The second
class of shilotri lands are those in which Government either reclaimed
the khdrs in the first instance, or subsequently became possessed of
them by lapse. Except that they pay an extra rate, which is spent
in repairing the embankments, the cultivators of these khdrs hold
their lands on the same condition as survey occupants. The third
class of shilotri lands comprises those in which reclamations were made
by association of cultivators on special terms arranged with Govern-
ment. Many forms of assessment were in force when Thma was
ceded to the British, and continue in use of groups of villages. They
can usually be traced to the Hindu chiefs who held the country before
the arrival of the Musalmans.. Rice lands were, without measurement,
divided into parcels or blocks which were estimated to require a certain
amount' of seed, or to yield a certain quantity of grain. The system
has several, names, dhep, hundabandi, muddbandi, kasbandi, takbandi,
and tokabandi, though the leading principle of all is the same. The
levy of a plough cess; a sickle cess, or a pickaxe cess, which, till
the introduction of the 'revenue survey, was the form of assessment
almost universal in hill and forest tracts, seems also to date from
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