THE OUTLYING REGIONS 191 
When the first Fort William was being constructed in 
Sttanuti, the English merchants naturally desired to obtain 
possession of some land in its immediate vicinity, and in the 
year 1698, with the sanction of the provincial Viceroy, they 
bought the rights (whatever they were) of the holders of 
these three Towns. In the sale-deed, the holders were 
styled zamindar, and the English understood the tran- 
saction as a purchase of the zamindari, or, as they rendered 
the word, ‘the right of renting” the Towns. 
In this transaction the word zamindar can be read in one 
of two ways Taken in its general sense, it may mean 
“holder of land,” denoting the fact of possession, but 
implying nothing as to the title on which possession is based; 
and this was probably the meaning current in the locality 
at this period. In the alternative, it might denote holding 
land by some particular title (whatever it was) derived 
from the Moslem ruler. Neither of these alternatives can 
be made to agree with the precise use of the word zamindar 
in the literature of Northern India, where, from the four- 
teenth to the eighteenth century, it denoted possession by 
a particular title antecedent to Moslem rule, that is to say 
its application was limited to the class which I have desig- 
nated as Chiefs. The founders of Govindpur and Sitanuti 
obviously cannot be brought within this class; and in point 
of fact the officials at Delhi did not describe the rights 
purchased by the Company as zamindari. In the year 
1717 the Surman Embassy obtained a farman! from the 
Emperor Farrukhsiyar, which, among other provisions, 
confirmed the existing English tenure of the three Towns, 
and sanctioned the acquisition of others on the same tenure. 
The extant translations of the farman speak of *‘ the renting 
of the three Towns,’ the phrase which the English authorities 
took as the equivalent of zamindari; but the farman itself, 
which had been examined in draft in the Revenue Ministry, 
speaks not of zamindari, but of taluqdari, the term which, 
as we have seen, had by this time come into use in Northern 
India to denote possession, whatever the title might be. 
! The text of the farmin is given alongside of the translation in I. O. 
Records, Home Misc., Vol. LXIX, p- 130. The sanction for the additional 
towns did not become operative, and consequently there are no illustrative 
Jocuments regarding. them.