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 CHAPTER XI.

LAND REVENUE ADMINISTRATION. Revenue History — Early systems— Practice under the Musalmans — The exactions of the zamindars — Beginnings of the Company's administration — The Permanent Settlement; the instructions issued — The action taken — The general results— The formation of the three Government taluks— The existing revenue settlement in these — Principles followed — Rates prescribed. INAMs. EXISTING DIVISIONAL CHARGES. APPENDIX, List of Chiefs in Council and Collectors.

NINE-TENTHS of Vizagapatam is zamindari land and the three Government taluks only came under direct administration in comparatively recent times. The history of the land revenue administration of the district is consequently simpler than usual.

Regarding the revenue systems followed by the ancient systems. Hindu rulers and their successors the Musalman kings of Golconda and the Subadars of the Deccan at Hyderabad with their subordinate Faujdars at Chicacole, only the very scantiest information survives.

The earliest authoritative account is the report of 1784 of the Committee of Circuit on 'the Kasimkóta division of the Chicacole circar' as the country was then styled. This says: —

'The ancient and present mode of making the collections we understand to be Avidely different. The one formerly in use under the native princes, when troops and servants were paid in necessaries instead of coin and before there were large exports and returns of money, was an equal division of the produce between the Rája and the cultivator, the latter defraying all village and collection expenses. The quantity of the crop was determined by a valuation made by indifferent persons just before the harvest and in the presence of the public servants and the inhabitants. This estimate being registered by the karnam, the Circar servants, after the grain was trodden out, received the Government moiety.'

This agrees roughly with the practice which also anciently obtained (at least in theory) in the southern districts of the Presidency under Hindu rule; there the swatantrams, or fees to village officers, were usually first subtracted from the total crop, and the remainder was then equally divided between the government and the ryot.