1 204 APPENDIX — WATER-COURSES.
2 This custom which obtains in the Sikh States, with regard
3 to alluvion, is universal, so far as my knowledge in the
4 local laws and usages of India has extended, wherever
5 lands are liable to such accident by an alteration in the
6 course of rivers. In the case of lands cast by the change
7 of the stream from one side of the river to the other,
8 though one Chief gains, and another loses, yet it is
9 customary to preserve the rights of the Zemindar, if he
10 consent to cultivate the lands. The decided enmity of
11 two Chiefs is seldom a bar to an arrangement, in which
12 each finds or perceives an advantage to himself, either
13 immediate or prospective, for streams in India are so
14 subject to change, that the land lost one rainy season
15 may be regained in the next, or even in the cold weather,
16 when the river falls and the floods cease.
17 The use and abuse of the ancient privilege of the
18 Zumeendars in damming up, and turning the coarse of a
19 stream into artificial Kools, or cuts, for the purpose of
20 irrigating the lands in its vicinity, causes disputes and
21 bloodshed ; and, after much angry dissention, the result
22 is generally a compromise stipulating for a reciprocal
23 enjoyment of the gifts of nature. In some instances,
24 and in contiguous estates, the parties will agree to take
25 equal shares of the water, either by the hour, or the day,
26 or by measurement ; in other cases, one will receive two-
27 thirds, and his neighbour one-third only, according to
28 their respective and pressing wants. The land-holders,
29 whose possessions are adjacent to the hills from which and
30 their base, these streams and springs take their rise,
31 require and demand a very large portion of the water for
32 their rice lands, into which it is diverted by numberless
33 water-courses, drawn with great ingenuity by the culti-