द ब्यूटीफुल ट्री: १८वीं सदी में भारत की स्वदेशी गुरुकुल शिक्षा (धर्मपाल)

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 Regarding the extent of such assignments from Hedgelee in Bengal, it was stated in 1770 that ‘almost one-half of the province is held upon free tenure’ under the Bazee Zemin category.⁸² The number of these Bazee Zemin (one may reasonably assume the term included individuals, groups as well as institutions) in many districts of Bengal and Bihar was as high as 30,000 to 36,000 recipients for the district. According to H.T. Prinsep,⁸³ in one district of Bengal around 1780, the applications for the registration of Bazee Zemin numbered 72,000. The position in the Madras Presidency was not very different, even after all the disorganisation, dispossession and demolition of the period 1750-1800, during which the British made themselves masters of the whole area. As late as 1801, over 35% of the total cultivated land in the Ceded Districts (the present Rayalseema area and the Kannada District of Bellary) came under the category of revenue free assignments, and it was the task of Thomas Munro to somehow reduce this quantity to a mere 5% of the total cultivated land. The reduction intended in the Ceded Districts was also carried out in all other districts, earlier in some, and later in others, and in some, the dispossession of such vast numbers of assignees of revenue took a long time. The returns from the various districts of the Madras Presidency, especially during the years 1805-1820, provide much information on the varied nature of these revenue assignments 76