THE LAST PHASE IN NORTHERN INDIA 167 
were then recent re-settlements, where the person entitled 
to collect revenue had induced peasants to settle in a 
deserted village. The inducements which were offered 
frequently included the promise that they would be allowed 
to remain there, and accordingly these peasants are shown 
in the earliest records as having a right otf occupancy. 1 
suspect that, in cases where the settlers belonged to a single 
caste, they may have been on the way to form a new 
Brotherhood when the process was arrested by the ideas 
introduced by British administrators; but I have not 
found a clear case of a Brotherhood actually originating 
in this way, and at any rate the administrators failed to 
discover a Brotherhood in these cases. The other group 
~onsists of villages which paid revenue to hereditary Chiefs, 
or to individuals who, in the disorganisation of the time, 
were establishing new chief-ships for themselves. There 
were Brotherhoods in some Chiefs’ villages, but in others 
there were merely unorganised peasants, who paid their 
{ues to a manager! appointed by the Chief, either one of 
themselves or a stranger. 
The foregoing analysis? will show that the agrarian 
system at this period was by no means uniform. As I have 
said in the previous section, it is impossible to state quan- 
titatively the area occupied under each of these classes, 
but there is no doubt that in the region now under ex- 
amination the bulk of the villages were cultivated by mixed 
bodies of peasants, each of them being managed bv a 
i Such managers appear in the Records under the name mugaddam, 
which also denoted the Headmen chosen by members of a Brotherhood. 
The similarity between the two kinds of managers is obvious if one looks 
on a village from outside, because their functions appear practically 
identical: inside the village, there is an obvious distinction between the 
Headman representing the Brotherhood and the manager imposed on the 
village from above. 
t In the text I have endeavoured to concentrate on the main lines of 
rural organisation, and have passed over various exceptions and anomalies. 
[wo of these, however, may be mentioned, because of their historical 
interest. (a) In some cases a village contained two Brotherhoods of 
jifferent castes. This arrangement seems to have been unstable: either 
one Brotherhood eventually ousted the other, or the village was divided 
into two on the basis of existing occupation. Such partitions furnish an 
explanation of what are now known as khetbat villages, where a single map 
shows the lands of two mauzas with the fields intermingled. (b) In some 
cases a Brotherhood was spread over a much larger area than a village, 
having presumably been allowed to occupy a compact area, or else having 
gradually absorbed other villages adjoining the original foundation.