A Khasra Girdawari (Hindustani: ख़सरा or خسره گرداوری) is a legal Revenue Department document used in India and Pakistan that specifies land and crop details.[1] It is often used in conjunction with a shajra (or shajra kishtwar), which is a family tree of owner ;used for reference map of the village that administers the land described by the khasra girdawari.[1][2] Khasras traditionally detail "all the fields and their areas, measurement, who owns and what cultivators he employs, what crops, what sort of soil, what trees are on the land.".[1] In Indian Land record system, "Khatauni" is an account book, "Khasra girdawari" is a survey book and "Sajra" is the village map. At village level, patwari is appointed to update and maintain these land records.
History
editSystematic khasra documentation in the Indian subcontinent has existed for several centuries, far predating the British colonial period. Medieval khasra documents are a useful source for historians in reconstructing the economic history in specific areas of India and Pakistan.[3]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ a b c Baden Henry Baden-Powell (1892), The Land Systems of British India: Being a Manual of the Land-tenures and of the Systems of Land-revenue Administration Prevalent in the Several Provinces, Clarendon Press, 1892,
...The shajra (usually with patwari on cloth or lattha ; shajra nasab is a family tree/lineage of land owner who owns that particular land in shajra; demarked by Kanoongo ) village map ... The khasra girdawari, or index register to the map. It is a list showing, by numbers, all the fields and their areas, measurement, who owns and what cultivators he employs, what crops, what sort of soil, what trees are on the land ... From this khasra girdawari a 'khatauni', or abstract of fields held by each person, is made out ...
- ^ Bankey Bihari Misra (1959), The Central Administration of the East India Company 1773-1834, Manchester University Press, 1959,
... The preparation of a detailed field map called Shajra in which the fields were numbered. The patwari was then to register all the field numbers in a corresponding field book called khasra girdawari which also contained the name of the proprietor ...
- ^ Satya Prakash Gupta, Centre of Advanced Study in History, Aligarh Muslim University (1986), The agrarian system of eastern Rajasthan, c. 1650-c. 1750, Manohar, 1986, ISBN 978-81-85054-11-7,
... These village papers were usually maintained and duly signed in the local language by the patel and patwari, the headman and the accountant respectively. The khasra papers are of different kinds ...
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