Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057352).pdf/135

 PAR 127 mass of the mahua produce, leaving one-fourth to the collector as pay- ment for his labour. Many things complicated this enquiry, and made the clearing up of the parties' rights difficult. Unlike cereals mahua is an irregular crop; every fourth year there is none, or 80-little that the taluqdar will not take the trouble of asserting his rights. For all those years the zamindar can truly say that he held his trees free. Again, by acknowledged custom, whoever plants a grove holds it free, keeping all the produce as long as it is a pora. I have been unable to determine even approximately the recognized age when a tree ceases to be a pora; at first I used to hear that it was about twelve years, but the moment the zamindars found that the point might become of use to an officer who was seeking out facts, then the limit of the age of a pora rose to 20, 30, 40 years; nor were the taluqdar's witnesses a whit behind. Still every zamindar can point to real pora trees, or to those which he has as yet managed to keep out of the paying register, and say with truth 'look at my muáfi trees! "I have no doubt that the zamindars had many trees muáfi, (rent free); many more included in their jamaí land, according to the peculiar custom of the taluqas, but the rest are the right of the taluqdar, and his rights are too large to be lost through any ignorance of the pargana custom, or ill-grounded trust in oral evidence, without doing him serious damage, and leading to a general distrust of our courts." Mahua in Patti.- In the Patti pargana the mahua tree is untaxed. In one village only, viz., mauza Pipri, in the Adhárganj estate, in which there are about 50 trees, is peri paid by a family of Brahman ex-proprie- tors at the extraordinarily high rate of Rs. 2 per large tree, and Re. 1 for the smaller ones, not poras. In all other parts of the pargana, the planter of the grove enjoys the entire produce without let or hindrancc; and yet Patti is composed almost exclusively of taluqdari estates. Cultivator's right over his grove.—Whilst in some portions of the dis- trict the cultivator or tenant-at-will possesses an absolute power over the trees of his grove, so that he can mortgage and even sell without the pre- viously obtained sanction of the landlord, there are many places where his rights are so restricted that he can only enjoy the usufruct, but cannot pick up the smallest twig in the shape of dried or fallen wood, much less fell, mortgage, or otherwise alienate the trees. Berúni and lawársi trees. It is usual in some estates to set apart one or two mango groves in a village, according to its size, for the sole benefit of the cultivators on the rent-roll. “Beruni" or "láwársi" trees (that is, trees which have sprung up of themselves, or the former owners of which have died without heirs, or have left the village) belong exclu. sively to the lord of the manor. He either consumes or sells the produce himself, or else he adds a patch of land, on which are growing some of these trees, to a tenant's holding, and turns the deed to account by raising the rent on the latter. This is what is sometimes called jamai holding, but the term in this sense is restricted. Rights of irrigation.-Rights of irrigation may be broadly classified as natural and artificial. Under the former come rights of irrigation from