Administrative System of the Marathas c18.s7.52

c18.s7.52

The above documents clearly show that the Patil's salary, if salary it was, was paid in kind and not in cash. Every villager gave him some shares of his produce, *e.g.*, the betel-leave sellers gave him 13 leaves per day, the Bania or grocer daily gave him a nut and he got vegetables, green fodders, cotton, oil, and sugar, in short all the necessaries of life including a pair of shoes from his fellow-villagers in recognition of his public services. Out of the *jirayat* and *bagayat* land he got a few acres. Above all, the Patil enjoyed some social distinction. In processions of Pola, Ganesh Gauri, and Shiralshet and at the time of the Holi and the Dasra, the Patil enjoyed precedence over all his fellow-villagers. Even Muhammadan Patils exercised the right of offering Holi cake, although it was a purely Hindu festival.¹⁰ Sometimes a lady from the Patil family had to be invited to a marriage dinner in the village, not as a matter of courtesy, but as a matter of right. There was a civil suit about this right in A.D. 1774-75, between two branches of the Patil family of Mauja Girbi, Pargana Phaltan, and the right was awarded after careful enquiry to the representatives of the elder branch.¹¹