1 114 PoPULATION, MANNERS, AND CUSTONS.
2 spontaneous effusion of a kind and liberal over-
3 ture; but is either dictated by the hope of obtain-
4 ing beatitude, or by a sense of the duty of a
5 nation, in a political view, to support its poorer
6 classes.
7 The customs of the Sikhs in respect to suc-
8 cessions to property and the possessions of lands,
9 are described with so much fidelity in a paper
10 translated by Captain Murray, once the political
11 agent of the British Government in the Sikh
12 States, that the author will be excused for offer-
13 ing a portion of the paper verbatim, in preference
14 to recording his own crude impressions upon the
15 subject. Continuous field service in isolated
16 districts does not furnish a person with means
17 for the acquisition of knowledge of purely civil
18 usages ; and yet a work of this kind would be in-
19 complete without details upon subjects of so much
20 importance.
21 “The rules of succession to landed property
22 in the Sikh states are arbitrary, and are variously
23 modified in accordance to the usages, thie in-
24 terests, and prejudices of different families, nor is
25 it practicable to reduce the anomalous system to
26 a fixed and leading principle. A distinction ob-
27 tains in the Canons of Inheritance between the
28 Manjhee and Malwa Sikhs, or Singhs; the
29 former are so termed from the tract situated
30 between the Ravee and Beeah rivers, from which