dependent on such assignments (like teaching, medicine, feeding
of pilgrims, etc.), had to be given up because of want of fiscal
support, as also due to state ridicule and prohibitions.
There are references (see the annexed reports from some of
the Madras Presidency collectors) to certain revenue
assignments here and there, and to daily cash or grain
allowances received by some of those who were occupied in
imparting Sanskritic learning, or Persian, and in some instances
even education at the elementary level. A few other collectors
also made reference to certain revenue assignments which used
to exist in the area (but were said to have been appropriated by
Tipu, and that, when the British took over these areas, they
formally added such revenue to the total State revenue). The
various area reports of the period 1792 to about 1806 make
much mention of dispossession of revenue assignees by orders of
Tipu in the area over which he had control. But, at the same
time, it is also stated that through the connivance of the revenue
officers, etc., such dispossession during Tipu’s reign was, in
most cases, not operative at all. What Tipu might have intended
merely as a threat to opponents, became a de facto reality when
these areas came under formal British administration.
But in most areas which the British had conquered (either
on behalf of the Nabob of Arcot, or on behalf of the Nizam of
Hyderabad, or administered in the name of the various Rajas of
Tanjore), most such dispossession was pre-1800. The process
started soon after 1750, when the British domination of South
India began gathering momentum in the early 1780s and the
revenues of the areas claimed by the British to be under the
nominal rulership of the Nabob of Arcot were formally assigned
over to the British. One major method used to ensure
dispossession was to slash down what were termed the ‘District
charges’, i.e., the amounts traditionally utilised within the
districts, but which, for purposes of accounting, were shown in
the records of the Nabob. The slashing down in certain districts
like Trichnopoly was up to 93% of the ‘District charges’ allowed
until then: a mere 19,143 Star Pagodas now allowed in place of
the earlier 2,82,148 Star Pagodas.
The report of the collector of Bellary is best known and
most mentioned in the published records on indigenous educa-
tion.^88 It is long and fairly comprehensive, though the data he