Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057352).pdf/221

RAE 213 30 55,398 000 PPS 199 1 Total 4 << 831 13 "The gross assets of the estates of taluqdars have been estimated at Rs. 15,71,191, and of the portion decreed away from them as above Rs. 1,09,417. Of which som Government takes The taluqdars take 26,477 The old proprietors take 27,647 109,417 "Éleven hundred and forty-four persons are recorded as holding shares in these assets, which gives an average of Rs. 24 per annum for each. recorded shareholder. In other words, the share of the assumed profits of their own villages absorbed by the old proprietors holding on a sub- settlement tenure and on farming leases is 50:41 per cent, to a share of 49:59 per cent. awarded to taluqdars. Altogether 10,623 claims to subordinate rights, excluding sub-settle- ment of all kinds in taluqas, have been preferred in this district, of which 4,673 related to sír and nánkár. to shankalp. 5,619 to all other claims. “Of these three hundred and thirty-one claims to shankalp, 161 were decreed. "Shankalp kushast is a pure muáfi tenure given by taluqdars, and therefore liable to resumption by them at regular settlement. Grants by shankalp were probably in existence long before the word taluqdar was invented. " Original shankalp.--They were originally grants of land, money or property of any kind, made to Brahmans of esteemed holiness by pious or superstitious persons. A ceremony has to be gone through which is called kushast, from the fact of grass being placed on the grantee's hand during it, and a formula was repeated from which the grant took its name of shankalp. "Enormity of resuming a shankalp.---To resume a grant of shankalp is by the Hindu religion, the deadliest of sins; and is visited by trans- formation in a future state into a worm in the nethermost Hindu hell, the nearest approacb to which state of existence is in this world, the life of a maggot in an unclean place whatever that may be like. The natives have a story of a rája who in knocking down some mud buildings, to clear a site on which to build a place, was on the point of destroying the nest of a bird, which was endeavouring to rear some young ones, and who in the agony of her despair, threatened to drop one grain from out of some grant of shankalp made by the rája into his food, to the end, that by eating it he might commit the unpardonable sin. It is to be hoped that the rája spared the nest, and escaped the punishment. " Of the 5,619 other claims, which include claims to groves, grazing lands, jungles, waste, wells, village sites and proprietary dues, 3,466 were admitted and 2,153 were dismissed or withdrawn,'