Which one of the following pairs is not correctly matched?
- (a)Kuddapah-kar : Rocky wastelands
- (b)Nancai : Wet fields
- (c)Puncai : Dry fields
- (d)Tottakal : Garden lands
Correct — A, Kuddapah-kar : Rocky wastelands. The other three pairs are the ordinary land classes of the Tamil revenue vocabulary and every one of them is matched right. Nancai (nanjai) is wet land — ground commanded by a river channel or a tank and put under paddy. Puncai (puncai/punjai) is dry land, farmed on the rain alone and sown with millets, groundnut and pulses. Tottakkal is garden land, the small watered plots kept for orchards, plantains and vegetables. Those three words are still printed on Tamil Nadu land records: a patta will describe a survey number as nanjai or punjai to this day. The first pair is the one that does not belong. The word paired with 'rocky wastelands' is not a category in that classification at all, and the Tamil revenue system's own name for uncultivable common waste is poramboke — land that carries no assessment and cannot be sold because it belongs to the government. That is why the key marks (a).
- (b)Nancai : Wet fields — Correctly matched, so it cannot be the answer. Nanjai is irrigated wet land — the paddy ground fed by a tank, a channel or a well.
- (c)Puncai : Dry fields — Correctly matched. Punjai is unirrigated dry land that depends on rainfall, which is why it carries the lower revenue assessment of the two.
- (d)Tottakal : Garden lands — Correctly matched. Thottam/thottakkal is garden land — the intensively watered plot for fruit trees, plantains and vegetables, distinct from both the paddy field and the rain-fed dry field.
Peninsular India classified farmland not by crop but by water. In the Tamil country the basic division is between nanjai, wet land that a tank or channel can irrigate, and punjai, dry land left to the monsoon; garden land (thottam) is a third, intensively watered class, and poramboke is the residual common or waste land on which no revenue is assessed. Colonial ryotwari settlements took these older categories over wholesale, which is how they survived into modern land records.
This is a three-right-one-wrong item and the fastest route is to find the three you can vouch for rather than to decode the fourth. Nanjai/punjai is a pair every Tamil Nadu land document carries, and garden land follows from thottam, the everyday word for a garden or grove. That leaves the first pair standing alone. One honest limit is worth stating: the term the paper prints against 'rocky wastelands' could not be traced to any published account of Tamil land classification, so this card does not certify a meaning for it. What can be checked is the positive side — the settled name for unassessed waste land in this system is poramboke, not the word the paper offers.
- Nanjai (nancai) is wet land — irrigated, mostly paddy; punjai (puncai) is dry land farmed on rainfall alone.
- Thottam or thottakkal is garden land, a separately watered class used for orchards, plantains and vegetables.
- Poramboke is the Tamil revenue term for government waste or common land; it carries no assessment and cannot be sold.
- Nanjai and punjai are still recorded in Tamil Nadu patta and chitta documents, and the classification affects both revenue and land-use permission.
Three of the paper's four pairs sit squarely inside this scheme; the first does not.
- Reading the question as 'which pair is correct' — it asks for the pair that is NOT correctly matched.
- Assuming an unfamiliar term must be right because the familiar ones are; the unfamiliar one is exactly where the error is planted.
- Confusing garden land (thottam) with dry land because both lie outside the paddy tract — garden land is watered, dry land is not.
Usually as a not-correctly-matched pair set on regional revenue or land-use vocabulary, or as a straight definition of nanjai and punjai.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
In the Tamil land-revenue vocabulary, 'nanjai' refers to which one of the following?
- (a)Irrigated wet land
- (b)Rain-fed dry land
- (c)Government waste land
- (d)Forest land
Answer(a) Irrigated wet land — nanjai is land commanded by a tank, channel or well and normally put under paddy; punjai is its rain-fed opposite.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following Tamil revenue terms denotes government waste or common land on which no revenue is assessed?
- (a)Thottam
- (b)Poramboke
- (c)Punjai
- (d)Patta
Answer(b) Poramboke — unassessed government land that cannot be sold; thottam is garden land, punjai is dry land and a patta is the title record itself.