Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/259

 BAH

181

would probably be held free of demand, and on the death of the recipient a low rent would be fixed. Ultimately, when two or three generations had passed and no ties of near relationship restrained the head of the family he would resume the grant altogether, and the descendants of the Bhayya would be found in the same villages, perhaps, holding their immediate cultivation at favourable rates, but in no other respect in any better position than ordinary cultivators.

Occasionally

it

Occasionally separated from tte parent

is

happened that the Bhayyas waxed sufficiently strong to f^ce the taluqdar and get their appanages separated from the parent estate. In such cases, however, we always find the lord watching his opportunity, and it

seldom the recalcitrant villages are not sooner or

main

later re-united to the

property.

Among

the Raikwars of Fakhrpur there has always been a struggle going on between the rule of primogeniture and the ordinary Hinrir"otpart.w' Hindu law of partition. The separation of the Rahwa and Chahlari estates and the temporary separation of two other clusters of villages subsequently recovered by the lord, illustrate the triumph of the latter principle.

The independent

owned by others than taluqdars number only and of these far the larger number are held by zamindars, the nature of whose tenure only so far

villages

251, iti^^*°^*''^'"'°™"°"

differs

the property

is

from that of the taluqdars' suzerainty that among the heirs of an owner deceas-

liable to sub-division

ing.

In some instances the ownership at present rests in one or perhaps two or three individuals, and it will be several generations probably before partition breaks the properties up into what are known as pattidari estates. Only 24^ villages in the whole district are at the present time held by coparcenary communities, the members of which hold their shares in severalty, while for fiscal purposes their estate is considered as undivided. properties, mention of which has been made in the historical sketch, form now for the most part Tlie Eaikw£rl complex distinct and separate estates, the sharers in which ™" '^ ^' hold in common, and they therefore cannot strictly be About thirty years ago, however, classed under the head of pattidari. before the severance of the shares of the different branches of the community was completed, these estates would have afforded a most perfect example of a large coparcenary property. In these properties at the present day

The Raikwari intermixed

there are no less than twenty-five distinct muhals running through ninetysix villat^es, but in only eight of these estates do the shareholders hold in Eighteen out of the twenty-five estates are covered by the severalty. Mahant Harcharan Das. the of sanad

This very singular tenure, which so far as whole villages are concerned may be said to be peculiar to the northern tracts of Birt9.

Their

origin.

^^iQ

province^

is

confined

in

this

district

to

two