Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v1.c20.s9.t2.26

v1.c20.s9.t2.26

Occupiers' Rights in the Land.—We shall close these remarks with some illustrative traditions and yet existing customs, to substantiate the ryot’s right in the soil of Mewar. After one of those convulsions described in the annals, the prince had gone to espouse the daughter of the Raja of Mandor, the (then) capital of Marwar. It is customary at the moment of hathleva, or the junction of hands, that any request preferred by the bridegroom to the father of the bride should meet compliance, a usage which has yielded many fatal results; and the Rana had been prompted on this occasion to demand a body of ten thousand Jat cultivators to repeople the deserted fisc of Mewar. An assent was given to the unprecedented demand, but when the inhabitants were thus despotically called on to migrate, they denied the power and refused. “Shall we,” said they, “abandon the lands of our inheritance (bapota), the property of our children, to accompany a stranger into a foreign land, there to labour for him? Kill us you may, but never shall we relinquish our inalienable rights.” The Mandor prince, who had trusted to this reply, deemed himself exonerated from his promise, and secured from the loss of so many subjects: but he was deceived. The Rana held out to them the enjoyment of the proprietary rights escheated to the crown in his country, with the lands left without occupants by the sword, and to all, increase of property. When equal and absolute power was thus conferred, they no longer hesitated to exchange the arid soil of Marwar for the garden of Rajwara; and the descendants of these Jats still occupy the flats watered by the Berach and Banas [499].