1 82 POPULATION, MANNER8, AND CUSTOMS*
2 principalities in India would remain entire, and
3 a common distribution would become universal,
4 to the extinction of great estates, and the anni-
5 hilation of the chiefs, with their aristocratical
6 influence.
7 " When the country, overrun by the Sikhs, had
8 been parcelled out into new allotments, the
9 former divisions into districts, as established
10 during the reigns of the Dehlee Emperors, and
11 recorded by the Kanoongoes, or rule-tellers,
12 became void, and much angry litigation arose
13 in respect to the village boundaries and waste
14 lands. The cultivators originated the cause of
15 dispute, and the effect was in most cases an
16 appeal to arms, and an effusion of blood, before
17 the claims of the parties could be heard and
18 decided by a convention of neighbouring Ze-
19 mindars, selected to draw a line of demarca-
20 tion, and bound by a solemn oath to act impar-
21 tially.*
22 " The litigants made choice of an equal number
23 of moonsifs or arbitrators, in some cases one
24 each, in others two to three each. These com-
25 mittees would prolong their sittings for weeks
26 * " The oath administered to the person who erects the boun-
27 dary pillars, if a Hindoo, is the Gunga-Jul, or the Chour, or
28 raw hide of the cow, or swearing by his son. If a Mussulman
29 the Koran, or the placing his hands on his son's head. The
30 Chour, and swearing by his own child, are the most binding."