The subject of Indian Land tenures and of the system under which the state levies a revenue from the land did not record a systematic manual for the officials and scholars until the author, B.H. Bedan Powell, multiplied the present sources of information from ancient literatures in Sanskrit and Arabic before finalizing the manual - Land System of British India, in 3 volumes.

These publications are a guide which is necessary. In these volumes only the essential features of the Acts and orders are given. The text will always afford a sufficient indication where there is room for an interpretation other than that which it adopts. In preparing this manual, the author studied some dozens of such reports. They were not indeed always easily available, nor were they light reading especially to those who had no official knowledge and experience but many of them were storehouses of valuable information. The present work attains a fair amount of clear knowledge on the subject.