1 ( 110 )
2 $2, The Sayer collections in Nuggur were classed under three
3 heads :-— :
4 1st, Hulut, or the excise duties levied on betel-nut, cardamoms and
5 pepper, on removal from the place of their production,
6 2nd. Charadayah, or Transit and Town Dues.
7 . 8rd. Karakah, which may be described as a composition for Sayer,’
8 being a tax paid by certain classes for relief from payment of Sayer
9 Duties.
10 23. The two last-mentioned heads were common, under other names,
11 to the rest of the Mysore Country, but the Halut was peculiar to the
12 betel and spice-producing districts along the Western Ghauts. It was
13 by far the most remunerative of all the heads of Sayer revenue, and the
14 system under which it was collected was therefore the first to be studied ;
15 but so complex, artificial and ridiculously inconsistent had it become in
16 its detail, that it took up considerable time before satisfactory information
17 and reliable accounts could be obtained upon which -to ground reform.
18 When however this mass of confusion’ came to be cleared away, a process ,
19 which was not effected without the strenuous opposition of every
20 influential man concerned in the cultivation, it was found to have -
21 been originally both simple and fair; so much so as to justify its
22 ‘ traditional celebrity as_one of the ablest measures of Shivuppa.
23 Naik, an ancient prince of these parts, whose reign is constantly
24 referred to as the golden age of Nuggur, from which every good or po-
25 pular measure takes date.
26 24, For carrying out the complicated Sayer system in this Division
27 there were sixty Cuttays established. of which thirty-one were frontier,
28 and twenty-nine internal. The establishments, of such of these as were
29 ‘situated in the two Sursayer [lakhas were paid by the Government,
30 the remainder by the Wut Izardar. Of the former there were fifty-two
31 and of the latter eight.
32 25. Having thus given an outline of the system which existed at the
33 time of the assumption, it is time to proceed to what was done after
34 that event.
35 26. In 1832-33 and 1833-34 all duties on grain were abolished.
36 27, In 1834-85 the information collected was sufficient to justify
37 the Commissioner in taking the Sayer under Amanee in all but four
38 Talooks, which. were also taken under the same management very
39 shortly afterwards.