11.  In the author’s time the courts of the East India Company still followed the Muhammadan criminal law, as modified by the Regulations.  The Indian Penal Code of 1869 placed the substantive criminal law on a thoroughly scientific basis.  This code was framed with such masterly skill that to this day it has needed little material amendment.  The first Criminal Procedure Code, passed in 1861, has been twice recast.  The law of evidence was codified by Sir James FitzJames Stephen in the Indian Evidence Act of 1870.

12.  This proposition, in the editor’s opinion, truly states the theory of land tenures in India, and it was a generally accurate statement of actual fact in the author’s time.  Since then the long continuance of settled government, by fostering the growth of private rights, has tended to obscure the idea of state ownership.  The modern revenue codes, instead of postulating the ownership of the state, enact that the claims of the state—­that is to say, the land-revenue--are the first charge on the land and its produce.  The Malabar coast offers an exception to the general Hindu role of state ownership of land.  The Nairs, Coorgs, and Tulus enjoyed full proprietary rights (Dubois, Hindu Manners, &c., 3rd edition (1906), p. 57).

13.  Amir Khan, the Nawab of Tonk, assigned to his physician, who had cured him of an intermittent fever, lands yielding one thousand rupees a year, in rent-free tenure, and gave him a deed signed by himself and his heir-apparent, declaring expressly that it should descend to him and his heir for ever.  He died lately, and his son and successor, who had signed the deed, resumed the estate without ceremony.  On being remonstrated with, he said that ’his father, while living, was, of course, master, and could make him sign what he pleased, and give land rent-free to whom he pleased; but his successor must now be considered the best judge whether they could be spared or not; that if lands were to be alienated in perpetuity by every reigning Nawab for every dose of medicine or dose of prayers that he or the members of his family required, none would soon be left for the payment of the soldiers, or other necessary public servants of any description’.  This was told me by the son of the old physician, who was the person to whom the speech was made, his father having died before Amir Khan. [W.  H. S.] Amir Khan was the famous Pindhari leader.  H. T. Prinsep translated his Memoirs from the Persian of Busawun Lal (Calcutta, 1832).

14.  The ancient deeds of grant, engraved on copper, of which so many have been published within the last hundred years, almost invariably conclude with fearful curses on the head of any rash mortal who may dare to revoke the grant.  Usually the pious hope is expressed that, if he should be guilty of such wickedness, he may rot in filth, and be reborn a worm.

15.  Revenue officers commonly observe that revenue-free grants, which the author calls rent-free, are often ill cultivated.  The simple reason is that the stimulus of the collector’s demand is wanting to make the owner exert himself.