Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/257

 BAH

179

sub-divisions of territory was conferred also on the Raikwdr Raja of Baundi, and in right of this we find him claiming a lordship over villages outside his own estates. His authority, however, here seems to have been

only nominal, and there is no trace of his having exercised any such right of approvement over the waste as in the Ikauna case.

A

mode

which the taluqdar came into existence was one independent of any grant from the ruling power. The members of a coparcenary community, so long as their of a coparcenary comnumbers were Small and the shares in the estate few "'"^' and well defined, would be able to maintain equality among themselves, and no member would aspire to a superiority over the rest, but with the extension of the area of the estate and an increase in the number of members composing the community, separation of interests would be inevitable. The act of separation would estrange those who formerly held well together quarrels between the holders of the shares would arise, originating in the very partition itself, and continuing until the owners of one portion of the property had acquired most decided superiority over the rest. To attain this superiority, it would be absolutely necessary for the division aspiring to it to choose a leader, and there would be every opportunity for this leader, whose ofiice would naturally tend to become hereditary, to aggrandize himself and his family at the expense of those whom he represented. In fact, the lord would be evolved out of a fourth

in

Or (4) a lordship would be evolved out



community

of freemen.

of the class above described. I can name no notable instance in this district, unless it be that of the Sayyads Examples. ^^ Jarwal. The number of shares into which the inhabited quarter of the village of Jarwal itself is divided, is clear proof of the equality of the interests of different divisions of the family in former days; but fifty years ago we find that there was only one man of mark in the whole family, who owned well nigh all the estate. The Balrdmpur estate is a more modern instance of the gradual absorption by the chief of the

Of suzerainties

family of all the rights belonging to the brotherhood. In this case, on our assumption of the Government of the province, we found the younger members of the families still struggling to free themselves from the hold Our decrees in the settleattained over them by the head of the family. ment court have now stereotyped the state of things which we found existing, and the position of the head is permanently established.

There remains the well-known and often-described method by which, during the last four decades of the Nawabi rule, vilwhich had hitherto been independent were gradually absorbed into the estates of the great taluqOTer^the zaSa^r?'^*^ dars. The process finds illustration in the historical It is most pithily described by the native expression that a taluqsketch. dar first " approved" of a village and then " digested" it. The period required for the satisfactory digestion of a township varied, as may be supIn some cases the former zaminposed, with the toughness of the morsel. dar or proprietary community had been already so broken by the tyranny of the ndzim that for the sake of peace and quietness they gladly saw their rights pass from them so long as they could be tolerably well assured of Or

(5)

the taluqdar

lages

M 2