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 BAH

182

Originating doubtless in first, the desire parganas, Ikauna and Bahraich. of the great landlords to bring under tillage the vast wastes which in early times in these districts formed the greater part of their fiefs and secondly, their desire to make the reclamation immediately remunerative so far as their own revenues were concerned, a birt consisted in the sale of the right to settle on a certain plot of waste, and to enjoy all such valuable perquisites as would necessarily result from that occupation.

Thus,

all

tanks dug and groves planted by the birtia, all dues leviable from the Cultivators, would be secured for ever to

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Hm.

birtia.

In addition to these rights, the dahyak or the tithe of the gross produce of the village was often stipulated for and obtained by the birt purchaser. In this district, however, out of the numerous claims that have been based on birt grants, in only one has any mention been made of this right.

These privileges were often purchased for sums which in old days seem to have been altogether out of proportion to the ^^^ °^ annual profits which, under ordinary circumstances thesTbirts""^^ in later times, could be extracted from the manage-

ment

of a malguzari village.

This would induce a belief that the security of tenure in such cases was Security of tenures,

more than usually good, and that^ a birtia making such a purchase would probably calculate on being

maintained in possession for at least a generation. It is remarkable, too, but that the birtias were almost invariably Brahmans, and even though the birt did not in any cases of sale partake of the nature of a gift made for devout reasons, still the high caste of the purchaser, doubtless rendered his tenure more secure than it would otherwise have been. Again, it would not be the interest of the lord to disturb the birtia in his village as long as he was improving its value, and thus it may be taken for certain that for very many years after the purchase the birtia retained. the management of the village, while, under ordinary circumstances, it would be most natural that he would remain the headman responsible to the lord for generations to come.

however, no trace in any birt deed that has been produced that any right of management was conferred by such No rigM of lease or sales. On the contrary, the terminology of the usual ma^gement conferred conditions implies that no such privilege was contemplated in these transactions. An express provision was almost universally made, that the beneficial interests above noted, which were strictly limited in their extent, should belong and be secured to the birtia, whether he held the lease of the village, or the lord collected his It was manifestly more convenient that rents direct from the cultivators. the birtia, connected intimately as he was with the village and its concerns from the very date of its settlement, should be the one to engage for the due collection and payments of the rents to the lord ; but there is nothing to indicate that the lord's power of giving the lease where he willed was controlled in any way save by his own sense of what was fair or conducive

There

is,

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