The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c4.s7.7

c4.s7.7

According to the Bengal-Bihar data of the 1770s and 1780s, the revenues of these areas were divided into various categories in addition to what was called the *Khalsa*, i.e., the sources whose revenue was received in the exchequer of the ruling authority of the province, or some larger unit. These categories together (excluding the *Khalsa*), seem to have been allocated or assigned the major proportion of the revenue sources (perhaps around 80% of the computed revenue of any area). Two of these categories were termed *Chakeran Zemin*, and *Bazee Zemin* in the Bengal and Bihar records of this period. The former, *Chakeran Zemin*, referred to recipients of revenue who were engaged in administrative, economic, accounting activities, etc., and were remunerated by assignments of revenue. The latter, *Bazee Zemin*, referred to those who—according to the British—were in receipt of what were termed ‘religious and charitable allowances’. A substantial portion of these religious allowances was obviously assigned for the maintenance of religious places: largely temples of all sizes and celebrity, but also mosques, *dargahs*, *chatrams*, *maths*, etc. Another part was assigned to the *agraharams*, or what perhaps were also termed *Brahmdeya* in South India as well as in Bengal. Yet, other assignments were given over to a variety of persons: to great and other pundits, to poets, to joshis, to medical practitioners, to jesters and even for such purposes as defraying the expenses of carrying Ganga water in areas of Uttar Pradesh to certain religious shrines on certain festivals.⁸¹