in the traditions and beliefs of various areas, communities,
groups, etc.,—with special attention being paid to their own
images of the society of which they were a part.
It is suggested here—and there is voluminous data
scattered in the British records themselves which confirm the
view—that in terms of the basic expenses, both education and
medical care, like the expenses of the local police, and the
maintenance of irrigation facilities, had primary claims on
revenue. It was primarily this revenue which not only
maintained higher education, but also—as was sometimes
admitted in the British records—the system of elementary
education.^80 It is quite probable that, in addition to this basic
provision, the parents and guardians of the scholars also
contributed a little according to their varying capacities by way
of presents, occasional feeding of the unprovided scholars, etc.,
towards the maintenance of the system. But to suppose that
such a deep rooted and extensive system which really catered to
all sections of society could be maintained on the basis of tuition
fees, or through not only gratuitous teaching but also feeding of
the pupils by the teachers, is to be grossly ignorant of the actual
functioning of the Indian social arrangements of the time.
According to the Bengal-Bihar data of the 1770s and
1780s, the revenues of these areas were divided into various
categories in addition to what was called the Khalsa, i.e., the
sources whose revenue was received in the exchequer of the
ruling authority of the province, or some larger unit. These
categories together (excluding the Khalsa), seem to have been
allocated or assigned the major proportion of the revenue
sources (perhaps around 80% of the computed revenue of any
area). Two of these categories were termed Chakeran Zemin, and
Bazee Zemin in the Bengal and Bihar records of this period. The
former, Chakeran Zemin, referred to recipients of revenue who
were engaged in administrative, economic, accounting activities,
etc., and were remunerated by assignments of revenue. The
latter, Bazee Zemin, referred to those who—according to the
British—were in receipt of what were termed ‘religious and
charitable allowances’. A substantial portion of these religious
allowances was obviously