Holding the lands of the village by hereditary right, by grant, conquest, or purchase, he collects his rents from the villages through a small staff of peons, or un-official police.  The accounts are kept by another important village functionary—­the putwarrie, or village accountant. Putwarries belong to the writer or Kayasth caste.  They are probably as clever, and at the same time as unscrupulous as any class in India.  They manage the most complicated accounts between ryot and landlord with great skill.  Their memories are wonderful, but they can always forget conveniently.  Where ryots are numerous, the landlord’s wants pressing, and frequent calls made on the tenantry for payment, often made in various kinds of grain and produce, the rates and prices of which are constantly changing, it is easy to imagine the complications and intricacies of a putwarrie’s account.  Each ryot pretty accurately remembers his own particular indebtedness, but woe to him if he pays the putwarrie the value of a ‘red cent’ without taking a receipt.  Certainly there may be a really honest putwarrie, but I very much doubt it.  The name stands for chicanery and robbery.  On the one hand the landlord is constantly stirring him up for money, questioning his accounts, and putting him not unfrequently to actual bodily coercion.  The ryot on the other hand is constantly inventing excuses, getting up delays, and propounding innumerable reasons why he cannot pay.  He will try to forge receipts, he will get up false evidence that he has already paid, and the wretched putwarrie needs all his native and acquired sharpness, to hold his own.  But all ryots are not alike, and when the putwarrie gets hold of some unwary and ignorant bumpkin whom he can plunder, he does plunder him systematically.  All cowherds are popularly supposed to be cattle lifters, and a putwarrie after he has got over the stage of infancy, and has been indoctrinated into all the knavery that his elders can teach him, is supposed to belong to the highest category of villains.  A popular proverb, much used in Behar, says:—­

  ’Unda poortee, Cowa maro! 
  Iinnum me, billar: 
  Bara burris me, Kayashh marige!! 
  Humesha mara gwar!!’

This is translated thus:  ’When the shell is breaking kill the crow, and the wild cat at its birth.’  A Kayasth, writer, or putwarrie, may be allowed to live till he is twelve years old, at which time he is sure to have learned rascality.  Then kill him; but kill gwars or cowherds any time, for they are invariably rascals.  There is a deal of grim bucolic humour in this, and it very nearly hits the truth.