Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057352).pdf/446

 438 SUL CHAPTER IV. ADMINISTRATIVE FEATURES. Fiscal-Tahsil-Pargana-Village --Police-Thánas - Crimes - Accidental deaths Revenue and expenditure-Education-l'ost-offices, Fiscal.For fiscal and general administrative purposes the district is divided into parganas and tshsils. Tahsil.The tahsil as a local division, with fixed boundaries, is a modern innovation, and as compared with the pargana an artificial one. It is simply an arbitrary aggregation of a few parganas, the number of which may be varied at pleasure, without causing much inconvenience or confusion. It has no counterpart whatever that I am aware of in Akbar's arrangements; the "dastúr," the nearest to it, being rather a district. An approximation to it came into existence in the constitution of the chakla by Sád-ulla Khan, minister of Shahjahan, and its formal reintroduction in the time of Saadat Ali Khan. There were then also tahsildars eo nomine, but their jurisdictions were scarcely analogous to the present tabsils. Pargana.The pargana, on the other band, may lay claim to consi- derable antiquity; it is usually believed to have succeeded a still older division, the tappa, which must itself have been in common use for some length of time, as the recollection of it still survives in various familiar names," though in all other respects it has long been obsolete. The pargana on its first introduction became to the tappa what the tahsil is now to the pargana, the former usually consisting of two or more of the latter; and in old documents the two divisions may be found mentioned together, though their co-existence was probably never recognized offici- ally. The exact date of the creation of the pargana is uncertain, Sir H. Elliott says that the name means " tax-paying land," and mentions instances of its use in A.D. 1210 and again in A.D. 1350. Mr. C. A. Elliott in the Chronicles of Oonao shows that it is possible the pargana was constituted by Shaháb-ud-din Ghori, and the use of the word in the early years of the thirteenth century favours the supposition. It occurs in Bábar's Memoirs, but on the other hand, is not exclusively employed in the Aín-i-Akbari, where the term muhál is often used as its equivalent. The co-extensiveness of a pargana with the possessions of a clan or individual family has often formed the subject of remark, and in its convertibility with muhál here illustrated lies a very possible explanation of the circumstance; for it suggests that the pargana was not only tax- paying land, but that like the muhal it was a separately possessed parcel of such land; in other words, that it was founded ou the distribution of properties at the time of its creation. Dr. W. Oldham seems to take a somewhat similar view when he says that " in the early days of Muharr. madan empire parganas appear to have been clearings or cultivated spaces in the forest, occupied generally by a single but sometimes by more than
 * For examplc, Tappa Asl, a name often given to the pargana.