ch
he was not slow to take advantage. The Banias have thus ousted numbers
of improvident proprietors of the cultivating castes, and many of them
have become large landlords. A considerable degree of protection has
now been afforded to landowners and cultivators, and the process has
been checked, but that it should have proceeded so far is regrettable;
and the operation of the law has been responsible for a large amount
of unintentional injustice to the cultivating castes and especially
to proprietors of aboriginal descent, who on account of their extreme
ignorance and improvidence most readily fall a prey to the moneylender.

25. The Bania as a landlord.

As landlords the Banias were not at first a success. They did not
care to spend money in improving their property, and ground their
tenants to the utmost. Sir R. Craddock remarks of them: [134] "Great
or small they are absolutely unfitted by their natural instincts to
be landlords. Shrewdest of traders, most business-like in the matter
of bargains, they are unable to take a broad view of the duties of
landlord or to see that rack-renting will not pay in the long run."

Still, under the influence of education, and the growth of moral
feeling, as well as the desire to stand well with Government officers
and to obtain recognition in the shape of some honour, many of
the Marwari proprietors are developing into just and progressive
landlords. But from the cultivator's point of view, residence on
their estates, which are managed by agents in charge of a number
of villages for an absent owner, cannot compare with the system of
the small cultivating proprietor resident among tenants of his own
caste, and bound to them by ties of sympathy and caste feeling,
which produces, as described by Sir R. Craddock, the ideal village.

26. Commercial honesty.

As a trader the Bania formerly had a high standard of commercial
probity. Even though he might show little kindliness or honesty in
dealing with the poorer class of borrowers, he was respected and
absolutely reliable in regard to money. It was not unusual for people
to place their money in a rich Bania's hands without interest, even
paying him a small sum for safe-keeping. Bankruptcy was considered
disgraceful, and was visited with social penalties little less severe
than those enforced for breaches of caste rules. There was a firm
belief that a merchant's condition in the next world depended on the
discharge of al