Volume 1

Primitive civilizations, or, Outlines of the history of ownership in archaic communities / by E.J. Simcox.

  • Edith Simcox
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Primitive civilizations, or, Outlines of the history of ownership in archaic communities / by E.J. Simcox. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    585/594 (page 571)
    5/i deposited with him ; after which the mortgagee pays himself interest at the rate of 3 or 5 per cent, on the loan, and gives the janmi the customary share of the available residue. The custom on this point differed in Northern and Southern Malabar. In the former Mr. Wigram believes that the kanam was “ really in its inception a usufructuary mortgage and the rent reserved was a nominal sum to show that the janmi had not parted with his seignorial rights.” 1 In other words, the so-called rent was really in its origin a form of land tax or tribute. A community in the habit of bartering the use of money against that of land only begins to demand rent for the land, when the latter has become the property of a politically dominant class. The poli- tical superior in this case was of a liberal and kindly sort, and accordingly the rent exacted was either nominal or a fair metayage, with virtual fixity of tenure. But the view already expressed as to the political origin of agricultural rent is confirmed when we find the mere fact of political superiority giving rise to a system of disguised leaseholds, among a people to whom the idea of undisguised leases is apparently not merely unfamiliar but unintelligible. In the English courts it has always been a matter of controversy whether a kanam should be treated as a lease or a mortgage. “ Rent is payable in the case of every kanam, but all kanams partake also to some extent of the incidents of a usufructuary mortgage ”2 . . . a kanam is not wholly a lease, “as the land enures as security, if not for the principal, at least for the interest of the loan advanced.” In Southern Malabar, where the kanam was originally known as “land lease,” and the janmi’s share amounted by custom to half the proceeds, while fees were regularly charged on the re- newal of the lease every twelve years, though the form of a mortgage was retained, the effect was really that the tenant paid a lump sum for the right of occupancy, which served virtually as security for the payment of his rent. Kanam, a term generally supposed to mean mortgage or pledge, is said to be only applicable to land, timber, trees, or slaves, i.e. the real property of the country. The legal vocabulary is extraordinarily copious. There . is a deed called koluppanayam, or “ ploughshare pledge,” which answers exactly to the Babylonian exchange of rent for interest; under this tenure the mortgagee has the right to cultivate the land, but the owner or landlord is free to payoff the loan when he pleases. Undaniti Panayam—so-called because it extinguishes itself—is “a settlement of the debt by the enjoy- ment of the profits for a specified term, answering to the vivum vadium, where the mortgagee holds the estate till the rent and profits repay the sum borrowed.” Otli is the third deed in a series, which gives the mortgagee possession and the entire produce, the landlord merely retaining the pro- prietary title and power to redeem ; “ even the soil itself might drop away from the owner of a janmam holding, and yet leave him as completely as before the janmi of the whole of it.” 3 The Otti is also described as a 1 Commentary, p. ioo. 2 Mvlnsa (ante, p. 437)1 24> 7°-