Glossary of Gujaratee Revenue and Official Terms (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1865 Excerpt: ...were sometimes admitted to proprietary rights either in a body, in which case a new estate was formed for them out of the common lands, or individually by taking up a lapsed share, or by purchase or marriage. Each shareholder had an absolute property in his own share of land, except that he might not sell it outright to a stranger without the consent of the community If this consent was given, the purchaser became a proprietor, and the original owner had no further claim on the land. But if a share was left, its owner having left the village, and another sharer or stranger cultivated it, or if the owner sold or mortgaged it to another sharer, he might reclaim it after almost any number of years by paying compensation awarded by a Panch." 14. In a village community of the kind above described, the non-proprietary cultivators were usually of two kinds--mere tenants-at-will, and those who had acquired some sort of right to their lands. The latter class were mostly those who cultivated the common lands. As the proprietors did not want these lands themselves, and as it was an object to them to get them cultivated, the tenants were naturally undisturbed in their possession; and since custom, in India especially, is always tending to become right, they gradually acquired a customary title to the possession of their holdings, greatly strengthened when they had permanently improved them. Those persons who cultivated the lands of particular proprietors were mostly mere tenants-at-will. If a proprietor could not cultivate himself all his lands, he usually tried to get some stranger to settle in the village and rent it from him. To this person he gave a site for a house in his share of the village site, and was considered to have a right to the tenant's services. ...