Page 49 - Muzaffargarh Gazzetteer

the Pathans were to be restored under the altered state of things brought
about by a cash assessment, the more just method was to have given them
an allowance from the revenue, and not to have imposed a new gram cess on
the cultivators. In 1853, the Deputy Commissioner reported that the exercise
of the rights of the Pathans who recovered Kasur, paralysed the industry of
the cultivators. Again in 1859, he said that the restoration of the Pathans to
Kasur rights was impolitic. The failure to define those rights had allowed
them to encroach on the inferior proprietors, and to ruin them. He instanced
villages that had been ruined in this manner. The result was that in some
villages, the Pathans succeeded in ousting the inferior proprietors, and in
others they reduced them to the position of tenants-at-will. When the inferior
proprietors were too strong to be interfered with, beyond the enforced
payment of Kasur, the Pathans became superior proprietors.
Inferior Proprietors, Adhlapi, Lichh and Kasur
The inferior proprietors in a village had usually no communities or clanship.
They were a miscellaneous body, each member of which was originally
introduced either by the Government or by the superior proprietors. In
villages, where superior proprietary rights existed, the inferior proprietor was
usually entitled only to the land occupied by himself or his tenants. The
unappropriated waste land belonged to the superior proprietors. The inferior
could graze his cattle in it, subject to the tirni rules, but could not cultivate
it without the leave of the superior. In other respects, the tenure of inferior
and absolute proprietors differed only in that as regards the latter, the
superior right had ceased to exist. The formation of new superior
proprietorship, where it had ceased to exist, had of course long been
impossible, but new inferior and absolute proprietors were constantly being
made by the contract known as Adhlapi. A proprietor allowed a third person
to sink a well in his land on payment of a fee, and to bring the land under
cultivation. The person so sinking the well used to become proprietor of a
share of the land brought under cultivation, or a person planted a garden on
a land and received a share of the land under the garden. If an inferior
proprietor cultivated through tenants, he received a grain fee which was
called Lichh in the Indus and Kasur on the Chenab. The rate varied with
locality and in consequence of contract, but it was almost invariably one-
seventeenth of the gross produce, and was known as Lichh solh satari. Under
the prior governments, the share taken by the state was "Mahsul”. Later, the
person who paid the land revenue received the mahsul. That person might
be superior proprietor or the tenant, or even some person unconnected with
the land; but as a rule, the inferior proprietor paid the land revenue and
received the mahsul. For the purpose of settlement, he had been presumed
always to pay the land revenue and to receive the mahsul, and his profits
had been assumed to be the mahsul plus the lichh or kasur.

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