Written and fact-checked by Aadil Saif. Arithmetic independently re-verified · Last updated September 2026
Part of the India Land Unit Converter series.
This series carried the pura for thirty-two units on a note saying that no government source for it existed anywhere. That note was wrong, and finding out how wrong is most of this page. Six judgments state the ratio (two of them Supreme Court judgments, the earliest from 1961), and three of the six do not define it but count with it, which is a harder thing to get wrong. No Act, rule or manual defines it at all. Meanwhile the word itself is the Sanskrit for a town, so it is the second half of village names across much of the country, which makes it the hardest headword in this series to count and the reason every figure below is bound to a second word. The last section derives the size of a different unit, the Madras cawnie, out of one 1974 judgment's own arithmetic, and lands on the same 57,600 square feet.
1 pura = 4 bighas (Assam) = 57,600 square feet = 6,400 square yards = 5,351.215104 square metres exactly.
| One pura, in | Amount | Terminates? |
|---|---|---|
| Square feet | 57,600 | yes |
| Square yards | 6,400 | yes |
| Square metres | 5,351.215104 | yes |
| Assam bigha | 4 | yes |
| Assam katha | 20 | yes |
| Lessa | 400 | yes |
| Hectares | 0.5351215104 | yes |
| Acres | 1.3223140495867768595041… | no |
| Pura | Square Feet | Bigha (Assam) | Katha (Assam) | Acre | Hectare |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 57,600 | 4 | 20 | 1.322314 | 0.5351215104 |
| 2 | 115,200 | 8 | 40 | 2.644628 | 1.0702430208 |
| 3 | 172,800 | 12 | 60 | 3.966942 | 1.6053645312 |
| 5 | 288,000 | 20 | 100 | 6.61157 | 2.675607552 |
| 10 | 576,000 | 40 | 200 | 13.22314 | 5.351215104 |
| 20 | 1,152,000 | 80 | 400 | 26.446281 | 10.702430208 |
| 50 | 2,880,000 | 200 | 1,000 | 66.115702 | 26.75607552 |
| 100 | 5,760,000 | 400 | 2,000 | 132.231405 | 53.51215104 |
| 200 | 11,520,000 | 800 | 4,000 | 264.46281 | 107.02430208 |
| 500 | 28,800,000 | 2,000 | 10,000 | 661.157025 | 267.5607552 |
| 1,000 | 57,600,000 | 4,000 | 20,000 | 1,322.31405 | 535.1215104 |
Everything on the Assam chain is a whole number, and the acre is the only figure on the page that recurs. That is not a coincidence and it is not a rounding: an acre carries a factor of 11², the pura does not clear it, and a pura is therefore exactly 160⁄121 of an acre, a decimal that repeats with a period of twenty-two digits. Turn it the other way and it terminates: an acre is 0.75625 pura, exactly.
Four things that table does not say.
Four bighas, and the courts have said so six times since 1961. Twice in the Supreme Court. Three of the six statements are arithmetic (79 puras "equivalent to 316 bighas", two puras written as "8 Bighas", 24 bighas written as "6 puras"), and every one of them divides to exactly four.
No Indian instrument defines it. Fifty-two statutory documents contain the word; bound to bigha, the entire statute book returns one, and that one is a Rajasthani village name. The grade splits, and this page keeps the two halves apart. The ratio, four bighas, is graded sourced, because six named judgments state it. The area in square feet is graded reported, not sourced, because none of them states that: it is derived from the Assam bigha.
It is a 240-foot square. The Assam chain is built on a twelve-foot rod, the mauzadari jar squared to make a lessa, and the pura is twenty of those rods on a side. Four hundred lessa, twenty katha, four bighas, one square.
It is still in use, and the newest use of it is not a revenue record. In January 2026 the Kohima Bench of the Gauhati High Court decided a dispute over land allotted in puras by a Village Council in Dimapur District, Nagaland. A unit no instrument defines is doing precisely the work that leaves no instrument behind.
Convert The answer, first · To bigha, katha, lessa and square feet · A compound figure
Understand Six judgments, no statute · Counting a word that is also a town · A village council in Nagaland · A 240-foot square · The pura and the cawnie · Three mistakes
Check FAQ · Sources and method
Convert to a specific unit: Acre · Ankanam · Ares · Bigha · Biswa · Biswa Kacha · Cent · Chatak · Decimal · Dhur · Dismil · Gaj · Gajam · Ground · Guntha · Hectare · Kanal · Katha · Killa · Lessa · Marla · Murabba · Nali · Perch · Square Centimeter · Square Feet · Square Inch · Square Karam · Square Kilometer · Square Meter · Square Mile · Square Yard
Every one of the other thirty-two units has a section on this page. Where two units are the same area their table would be identical, so the second section points at the first rather than repeating it.
Every factor is a pura's own size, 57,600 square feet, divided by the target unit's. To check any row by hand, take that number, divide, and compare.
Each one comes from a single anchor, the acre at 43,560 square feet, by exact fraction arithmetic. Where a factor recurs, the formula gives the fraction rather than a rounded decimal, because a rounded factor is a wrong instruction rather than an approximate one: the fraction is what has to be carried wherever the arithmetic must close.
| Conversion | Formula | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Pura to Acre | Pura ÷ 0.75625 | Recurring |
| Pura to Ankanam | Pura × 800 | Exact · Ankanam is regional. This row is the Standard; also 1,600 |
| Pura to Ares | Pura × 53.51215104 | Exact |
| Pura to Bigha | Pura × 4 | Exact · Bigha is regional. This row is the West Bengal / Assam / Jharkhand; also 2.115702, 6.347107, 8.46281 and 5 more |
| Pura to Biswa | Pura ÷ 0.0236328125 | Recurring · Biswa is regional. This row is the UP / Rajasthan pucca; also 66.115702, 126.942149, 132.231405 |
| Pura to Biswa Kacha | Pura × 15,360/121 | Recurring · Biswa Kacha is regional. This row is the Punjab / Haryana revenue; also 66.115702 |
| Pura to Cent | Pura ÷ 0.0075625 | Recurring |
| Pura to Chatak | Pura × 1,280 | Exact |
| Pura to Decimal | Pura ÷ 0.0075625 | Recurring |
| Pura to Dhur | Pura × 16,000 | Exact · Dhur is regional. This row is the Tripura; also 846.280992 |
| Pura to Dismil | Pura ÷ 0.0075625 | Recurring |
| Pura to Gaj | Pura × 6,400 | Exact |
| Pura to Gajam | Pura × 6,400 | Exact |
| Pura to Ground | Pura × 24 | Exact |
| Pura to Guntha | Pura ÷ 0.01890625 | Recurring |
| Pura to Hectare | Pura × 0.5351215104 | Exact |
| Pura to Kanal | Pura ÷ 0.09453125 | Recurring · Kanal is regional. This row is the Standard (66-inch karam); also 12.8, 13.93724, 15.802469 |
| Pura to Katha | Pura × 20 | Exact · Katha is regional. This row is the Assam; also 42.31405, 80, 33.057851 and 2 more |
| Pura to Killa | Pura ÷ 0.75625 | Recurring |
| Pura to Lessa | Pura × 400 | Exact |
| Pura to Marla | Pura ÷ 0.0047265625 | Recurring · Marla is regional. This row is the Standard (66-inch karam); also 256, 278.744802, 316.049383 and 1 more |
| Pura to Murabba | Pura ÷ 18.90625 | Recurring · Murabba is regional. This row is the Punjab canal colony; also 0.084628 |
| Pura to Nali | Pura ÷ 0.0375 | Recurring |
| Pura to Perch | Pura ÷ 0.0047265625 | Recurring |
| Pura to Square Centimeter | Pura × 53,512,151.04 | Exact |
| Pura to Square Feet | Pura × 57,600 | Exact |
| Pura to Square Inch | Pura × 8,294,400 | Exact |
| Pura to Square Karam | Pura × 230,400/121 | Recurring · Square Karam is regional. This row is the Standard (66-inch karam); also 2,304, 2,508.703214, 2,844.444444 |
| Pura to Square Kilometer | Pura × 0.005351215104 | Exact |
| Pura to Square Meter | Pura × 5,351.215104 | Exact |
| Pura to Square Mile | Pura ÷ 484 | Recurring |
| Pura to Square Yard | Pura × 6,400 | Exact |
The pura's ratio is not in a glossary, a manual or a rule. It is in the law reports, and it is there six times.
| Court and date | The words in the judgment |
|---|---|
| Supreme Court of India, 23 February 1961, Jibon Chandra Sarma Doloi v. Anandi Ram Kalita | "five annas a pura (four bighas)" |
| Supreme Court of India, 22 November 1971, Harendra Nath Bhattacharya v. Kaliram Das, 1972 AIR 246 | "The original grant was in respect of 79 puras of land which would be equivalent to 316 bighas." |
| Gauhati High Court, 4 February 1986, Assam Rifles v. Smt. Hemada Hazarika | "he used to cultivate and had one Pura of land, that is, four bighas of land" |
| Gauhati High Court, 12 October 2023, Khitish Chandra Phukan | "each 'pura' of land (4 bigha=1 pura)" |
| Gauhati High Court, 27 June 2024, Md. Salak Uddin v. State of Assam | "Paiks who were allotted two Puras (8 Bighas) of Rice Land free of rent" |
| Gauhati High Court, Kohima Bench, 29 January 2026, Shri Veshuhu Vero v. State of Nagaland | "the petitioner is possessing 24 bighas of land (6 puras of land)" |
A definition can be copied. A judge writing "one pura, that is, four bighas" may be repeating what counsel told him, and counsel may be repeating a website.
Three of these six are not definitions. They are sums.
| The judgment's figures | Divides to | |
|---|---|---|
| Supreme Court, 1971 | 79 puras "equivalent to 316 bighas" | 316 ÷ 79 = 4 |
| Gauhati HC, 2024 | "two Puras (8 Bighas)" | 8 ÷ 2 = 4 |
| Gauhati HC, 2026 | "24 bighas of land (6 puras of land)" | 24 ÷ 6 = 4 |
A number that has to survive a multiplication is a different class of evidence from a number that only has to survive being written down. 316 is not a round figure, 79 is not a round figure, and the pair of them being consistent with 4 is not something a drafter reaches by accident. The 1971 figure and the 2026 figure are fifty-five years and two courts apart, and they agree exactly.
And the 1971 judgment does it a second time, slowly. It tracks one holding, the 79-pura Ahom grant of 1741, through three government exercises on the same ground: 304 bighas at the demarcation survey of 1881, roughly 313 at the settlement of 1884–85, and 243 once half-revenue nispi kheraj was assessed in 1905–06. Against the 316 bighas the grant converts to, the two survey figures are 3.797% and 0.949% away. That is the ordinary disagreement between two nineteenth-century demarcations of the same ground, not the signature of a different unit, and the third figure is a change of assessment, not of area. A ratio that survives being re-surveyed twice is doing more work than a definition.
That is the strongest evidence base for any unit in this series that has no instrument behind it. Stronger, on this measure, than the nali's or the Bihar dhur's, both of which rest on usage rather than on arithmetic that closes.
"pura" returns 52 documents in the statutory corpus. Not one of the ten highest-ranked is a unit of area:
| What the statutory hits actually are | Example |
|---|---|
| Rajasthan village schedules | "Chhatarpura", "Khenga pura", Land Acquisition (Rajasthan Amendment) Act, 1987 |
| A Jammu and Kashmir constituency | "R. S. Pura (SC)", J&K Reorganisation Act, 2019, s.103 |
| Siddha medicine | "Pura Maruthuvam" (external therapy); three sets of Indian Medicine Central Council Regulations |
| Homoeopathy, in Latin | "Materia medica Pura", Homoeopathy (PG Degree) M.D. Regulations, 1989 |
| Delhi colony lists | "Nathu Pura, Burari", "Dharam Pura", NCT of Delhi (Recognition of Property Rights) Regulations, 2019 |
Bind the query to bigha and the whole statute book returns one document: the Rajasthan Colonisation (Chambal Project Government Lands Allotment and Sale) Rules, 1957. Rajasthan has no pura. That is a village name meeting a Rajasthani bigha inside one rule, and it is the closest the unit comes to legislation.
So the grade splits, and the page says which half is which. In this series a figure is graded sourced only where a named instrument, judgment or manual states it. The ratio (one pura, four bighas) is sourced: six named judgments state it, three of them arithmetically. The area in square feet is graded reported, not sourced, and the generated tables further down this page say so in those words: no instrument, judgment or manual located states 57,600 square feet. It is four Assam bighas, and the Assam bigha's own authority is the twelve-foot mauzadari jar of the Assam Land Records Manual, established with the Assam katha and its twentieth, and not restated here.
That distinction is the practical one. If you have a deed reciting puras in the Brahmaputra Valley, the ratio behind it has judicial support going back sixty-five years. If you need the parcel in square feet or square metres for a plan, a valuation or a stamp calculation, you are standing on a chain of derivations, and the last authority in that chain is a survey manual's rod, not a definition of your unit.
What to check first, in Assam. The chitha and the jamabandi entry for the dag, and the patta, state a holding in bigha–katha–lessa directly. So a pura figure in a deed does not have to be converted on trust: it can be reconciled against the revenue record's own three-rung figure for the same dag first, and only then turned into square feet. Where the deed's puras × 4 and the record's bighas disagree, that disagreement is the thing to settle before converting anything, not something to split the difference on.
Pura is Sanskrit for a town or a walled city, and it is the second element of place names across northern and western India, the corpus hits alone put it in Rajasthan, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir and Assam. That makes it the hardest headword in this series to count, and the counting method has to answer for it before any figure on this page can be believed.
Search the Gauhati High Court (the court for Assam and, through its Kohima Bench, for Nagaland) for the bare word:
| Query, Gauhati High Court | Documents |
|---|---|
"zzqqxx", the control |
0 |
"pura", bare |
708 |
"pura" "bigha" |
26 |
"pura" "katha" |
7 |
682 of the 708 do not contain the word bigha, and the ten highest-ranked bare hits are not the unit at all. They are a bus driver named Pura Lodar; addresses at Heera Pura, Jaipur and Maksudan Pura, Sawai Madhopur; the Jammu tehsil R. S. Pura, arriving in an Assam court through a motor-accident claim; and a Lance Naik named Pura Tajo in a 1972 court-martial appeal.
So the bare count is 96.3% noise, and no bare count of this word is used anywhere on this page. Every figure here is bound to a word from the land vocabulary, bigha or katha, and the number that survives the binding is 26.
That is a small number, and it is stated as a small number. Twenty-six documents in one High Court is not a measurement of how often the pura is used in Assam; it is a floor on how often an English-language database records it being used in one court. The unit lives in chitha and jamabandi entries and in village council allotments, which is exactly where a legal-search corpus does not reach.
Every unit in this series that shares its name with something else got a section like this one. One unit in this series had to be separated from a drain; another had to be separated from five spellings of one word. This is the worst case of the three, and it is worse in kind, not just in degree.
A drain is one competing sense. Pura as a place-name element is not one competing sense. It is thousands, spread across every state, appearing in cause titles and addresses rather than in the body of a judgment. A converter that reports "hundreds of Indian court documents use the pura" is reporting Indian toponymy. The correct number is 26, and the honest thing to say about 26 is that it is a floor on one court's record.
The most recent judgment in this page's evidence is not from Assam.
Shri Veshuhu Vero v. State of Nagaland, Gauhati High Court, Kohima Bench, WP(C)/133/2025, Robin Phukan J, decided 29 January 2026, concerns land at Zani Village, Dimapur District, Nagaland. The judgment counts that land in puras nine separate times:
"the petitioner was allotted two parcels of land (2 puras each, totalling 4 puras)"
"the Zani Village Council also allotted an area of land measuring 4 puras to Smt. Wekhape"
"on 12.03.1989, the petitioner had also purchased 3 puras of land in Zani Village"
"the petitioner was in possession of total 11 puras, 3 bighas of land"
The allotting authority is a Village Council. That is the point worth stopping on. Article 371A(1)(a) of the Constitution puts "ownership and transfer of land and its resources", along with Naga customary law and procedure, outside the reach of any Act of Parliament unless the Legislative Assembly of Nagaland resolves otherwise. Land there runs on customary tenure by constitutional design, and allotment runs through the village. A unit that no Act defines is being used by the body that no Act sends a surveyor to, and the pair of them reached the High Court in 2026 still doing it.
The compound recital carries correctly, and that is one observation, not a test. "11 puras, 3 bighas": four bighas make a pura, so a correctly written residue cannot reach four, and three does not. This carry-behaviour method was built on the Bengal chatak, and nine observations of it showed what that many are and are not worth. One observation is worth less than that. It is recorded because it is the only compound pura recital located anywhere, and because a method that reports only its successes is not a method.
The judgment states its own 24-bighas-to-6-puras ratio and that ratio is used. The area of a Nagaland pura in square feet is not claimed here, and nothing on this page converts it.
Nagaland is not on the Assam revenue chain. The 57,600 square feet on this page comes from four Assam bighas of 14,400, and the judgment does not say which bigha it means. It would be easy, and wrong, to read the 4:1 ratio as importing the Assam bigha with it. A reader with a Dimapur allotment should establish the local bigha before converting anything, and this page cannot supply it: no instrument located fixes a Nagaland bigha, and none is asserted.
Where to look for it, three places, in this order. First, the Village Council's own allotment record, which is the primary document for customary land in Nagaland and usually carries the area and the boundaries in the same entry. Second, any later sale deed over the same parcel, which repeats the area and sometimes converts it. Third, where the parcel falls in an area that carries revenue records at all, the patta and survey record at the Deputy Commissioner's office.
If two of the three give the same square-foot or bigha figure for the same parcel, that is your multiplier. If none of them gives one, then the parcel has an area in puras and no area in square feet, and that is a fact about the record rather than a gap in the arithmetic, which is a better position to be in than holding a converted figure that no document supports.
Every whole number in the table at the top of this page comes from one length, and the length is not the pura's own.
The Assam chain is built on the mauzadari jar, a twelve-foot rod prescribed by the Assam Land Records Manual, where that rod comes from is established with the lessa, and this page takes it as given. Square the rod and you have a lessa. Everything above it is a larger square:
| Side | Area | Rods on a side | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mauzadari jar (the rod) | 12 ft | n/a | 1 |
| Lessa | 12 ft | 144 sq ft | 1 |
| Assam bigha | 120 ft | 14,400 sq ft | 10 |
| Pura | 240 ft | 57,600 sq ft | 20 |
Twenty rods to a side, four hundred lessa to the pura. One length in that table is on the record, the twelve-foot rod. The other two are multiples of it: 120 is ten rods and 240 is twenty, and each area is that length squared. Nothing else is assumed.
That is also why the Assam column of the answer table has no decimals in it. A ladder built by squaring a single rod stays whole all the way up, and the only figure that breaks is the one that leaves the ladder, the acre, which is built on a rod of 16½ feet instead, and carries the 11² that no power of ten will clear.
| Pura | Square feet | Assam bigha | Assam katha | Lessa | Acres |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 57,600 | 4 | 20 | 400 | 1.322314049… |
| 2 | 115,200 | 8 | 40 | 800 | 2.644628099… |
| 3 | 172,800 | 12 | 60 | 1,200 | 3.966942148… |
| 5 | 288,000 | 20 | 100 | 2,000 | 6.611570247… |
| 10 | 576,000 | 40 | 200 | 4,000 | 13.223140495… |
| 20 | 1,152,000 | 80 | 400 | 8,000 | 26.446280991… |
| 50 | 2,880,000 | 200 | 1,000 | 20,000 | 66.115702479… |
| 100 | 5,760,000 | 400 | 2,000 | 40,000 | 132.231404958… |
The first four columns are exact and the fifth never is. A pura is 160⁄121 of an acre; 121 is 11², and every acre figure in this table is cut short with an ellipsis rather than rounded up into, so the last digit shown is a digit that is there. The generated tables further down the page round to the series' display precision instead and print no ellipsis; where the two disagree in the final digit, this table is the one that has not rounded.
Read the fifth column the other way and it terminates: one acre is 0.75625 pura, exactly, because 121⁄160 has only twos and a five underneath it.
Two figures from the judgments, converted: the two puras of rice land in Md. Salak Uddin is 115,200 square feet, 2.644628099… acres; the 24 bighas in Veshuhu Vero is 345,600 square feet, and the judgment itself writes that as six puras.
The only compound pura recital located anywhere is the one in the 2026 Nagaland judgment, and none of the tables above converts it. Reduce to bighas, convert once.
| Step | ||
|---|---|---|
| Puras to bighas | 11 × 4 | 44 |
| Bighas | 3 | |
| Total | 47 bighas | |
| Square feet | 47 × 14,400 | 676,800 |
| Square yards | 676,800 ÷ 9 | 75,200 |
| Square metres | 676,800 × 0.09290304 | 62,876.777472 |
| Acres | 676,800 ÷ 43,560 | 15.537190082… |
Those square-foot and metric figures assume the Assam bigha of 14,400 square feet, and the Nagaland judgment does not say which bigha it means. The 47 is safe: it comes from the judgment's own 4:1 ratio. Everything below the 47 is this page's arithmetic on an Assam assumption, and a reader converting a Dimapur allotment should replace 14,400 with whatever the local bigha turns out to be. The method survives; the multiplier may not.
Reduce to the smaller unit first. Converting the puras and the bighas separately and adding gives the same answer here, but it invites two roundings instead of one, which is exactly what an Assam drafter was caught doing inside a live building rule.
57,600 square feet is also the cawnie, the old Madras unit, still recited in Tamil Nadu land documents today. On the published value of each, and no instrument states either one.
| Where | Square feet | What stands behind that figure | In the statute book | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pura | Assam, Nagaland | 57,600 | Derived: four Assam bighas. Graded reported, not sourced | Nothing |
| Cawnie | Tamil Nadu | 57,600 | The published value; corroborated below, to within 0.187%, by a 1974 judgment's own arithmetic | The Kalakshetra Foundation Act, 1993; a Union statute whose schedule states land in cawnies |
Identical area, opposite fates. The unit at the Brahmaputra end of the country has six judgments and no legislation; the unit at the Coromandel end has an Act of Parliament stating property in it.
And the cawnie is not a dead unit either. The word returns 148 documents across the whole corpus, and bound to ground inside the Madras High Court it returns 85, in recitals running from 1903 to 2025. What the Act does is state land in cawnies; what it does not do is say how big one is, which is why the size has to be tested rather than looked up.
That identity is only worth printing if the cawnie's size is independently tested. Otherwise it is two published numbers agreeing with each other. So it is tested here, against one judgment's own arithmetic.
The result, before the working. The judgment's own addition fixes the middle place of its three-place notation at a sixteenth, using no figure from outside the notation. Its two acre glosses then confine a cawnie to a window 0.187% wide, and 57,600 square feet, which is 240², sits inside it. The lowest place narrows to two candidates and no further. Nothing outside the judgment is used at any step, and the steps are below.
Thirugnana Sambandam Chettiar v. Kadumbadi Naicker, Madras High Court, V. Ramaswami J, 8 March 1974, (1975) 1 MLJ 75. The suit concerned Paimash No. 654, split east and west. The judgment prints three areas in the old three-place cawnie notation and glosses two of them in acres and cents:
"The disputed property is stated to be 1-14-8 cawnies equivalent to 2 acres and 52 cents of punja land"
"extent of this land is given as 2-4-0 cawnies corresponding to 2 acres 97 cents"
"Paimash No. 654 measured an extent of 4-2-8 cawnies"
and it records that the eastern 2-4-0 and the western 1-14-8 together are the whole of Paimash 654.
Add the two parts. In the middle column 4 + 14 = 18, and the total shows 2 with one carried into the first column, where 2 + 1 + 1 = 4. A carry of one means the base is 18 − 2 = 16, and no other base produces that line.
That derivation assumes nothing about how big a cawnie is. It is a fact about the notation, recovered from three numbers in the same judgment, and it holds whatever the unit turns out to measure. Everything below rests on it.
Now the check. If the second place is a sixteenth, 2-4-0 is 2¼ cawnies; on a cawnie of 57,600 square feet that is 129,600 square feet, or 2.975206611… acres. The judgment says "2 acres 97 cents", the same figure, cut short rather than rounded up.
That second paragraph is a check and not a second derivation, and the difference matters. With the base and the cawnie's size both unknown, one acre gloss is a single equation in two unknowns and fixes neither. What it shows is that sixteen and 57,600 square feet are consistent with the judgment's own gloss to the cent, which is worth having, and is not the same as deriving either of them. The derivation is the carry; the gloss is the corroboration.
"2 acres and 52 cents", read as a truncation, puts 1-14-8 somewhere in [2.52, 2.53) acres.
On a cawnie of 57,600 square feet and a middle place of a sixteenth, the first two places of that figure are worth 108,000 square feet. So the eight units in the third place have to supply the rest, between 1,771.2 and 2,206.8 square feet between them.
Every divisor of 57,600 was tried as the number of third-place units to a cawnie. Exactly three land in the window:
| Units to the cawnie | Each unit | 1-14-8 becomes | A whole multiple of 16? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 225 | 256 sq ft | 110,048 sq ft | no |
| 240 | 240 sq ft | 109,920 sq ft | yes |
| 256 | 225 sq ft | 109,800 sq ft | yes |
Two survive the requirement that the smallest rung nest a whole number of times inside the middle one. So the third place is a 240th or a 256th of a cawnie, and it is not possible to say which from this judgment. That is a bound, not a value, and it is left as one, that standard was set at unit 30, where the same brute force closed at eighty-four possibilities instead of two.
This page also does not name those two rungs. The ratios are derived; the Tamil names for them are not, and inventing one would be the only unsourced sentence on the page.
On sixteenths and 256ths, using nothing but the judgment's own figures:
| Square feet | The judgment's gloss | What it computes to | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2-4-0 | 129,600 | "2 acres 97 cents" | 2.975206611… ✓ |
| 1-14-8 | 109,800 | "2 acres and 52 cents" | 2.520661157… ✓ |
| Sum | 239,400 | ||
| 4-2-8 | 239,400 | the whole of Paimash 654 | identical ✓ |
Two acre glosses reproduce to the cent and the third figure reproduces by addition. Nothing outside the judgment was used.
Not 57,600 exactly: a window. Taking only the acre gloss on 2-4-0, the cawnie lies in [57,499.2, 57,692.8) square feet. Bring in the 1-14-8 gloss and it tightens to [57,584.8, 57,692.8) on 256ths, or [57,522.0, 57,692.8) on 240ths, a spread of 0.187% and 0.296% of the figure respectively.
57,600 sits inside every one of those windows, and it is 240². The judgment does not state the number; it corners it, and the round figure in the corner is a 240-foot square, the same 240-foot square as the pura.
C. R. Narasimulu Naidu v. Special Commissioner, Madras High Court, G. K. Ilanthiraiyan J, W.P. No. 13513 of 2013, 30 September 2021:
"land measuring 40 cawnies equivalent to 53.20 Acres"
That is 1.33 acres to the cawnie, exactly, and the 1974 judgment's own arithmetic caps the cawnie below 1.324444… acres. The two cannot both be right.
| Acres | Square feet | |
|---|---|---|
| 40 cawnies of 57,600 sq ft | 52.892561983… | 2,304,000 |
| The 2021 judgment | 53.20 | 2,317,392 |
| Difference | 0.307438… | 13,392 |
13,392 square feet, 0.581%, or five and a half Madras grounds. The likeliest explanation is the commonest arithmetic mistake in this whole series: 1.322314… rounded to 1.33 first, then multiplied by forty. Rounding before multiplying is what turns a hundredth into an acre.
It is recorded as a discrepancy and not resolved. The underlying patta was not obtained, and no claim is made here about which figure the parties were working from.
A cawnie is twenty-four Madras grounds of 2,400 square feet, and so, therefore, is a pura:
1 pura = 24 grounds = 800 ankanam (72 sq ft) = 1,280 chatak = 6,400 gajam.
All four are exact. The Madras ground has a statutory definition of its own; this page borrows it and does not restate it.
Treating the pura as a national unit. It is not. It is used in Assam and in Nagaland, and the six judgments that state its ratio are all from those two states or from appeals out of them. A "pura" in a Rajasthani or Delhi document is a village name, not an area. That is precisely what the ten highest-ranked statutory hits turn out to be.
Carrying the Assam bigha into a Nagaland document. The 4:1 ratio travels; 14,400 square feet does not, because nothing establishes it outside the Assam chain. How far apart the regional bighas are is set out under that unit, far enough that this substitution can move a parcel by a factor of two.
Rounding the acre before multiplying. One pura is 1.322314049… acres. Round it to 1.32 and a hundred puras lose 10,080 square feet; round it up to 1.33 and they gain 33,480, which is the error a Madras judgment made in 2021, on forty cawnies of the same size. Multiply in square feet and convert once at the end, which is the Four-Check Method's rule and the reason the acre column above is the only one carrying an ellipsis.
All three mistakes have the same shape: a figure carried further than the evidence behind it goes. The pura's ratio travels sixty-five years and two states. Its 57,600 square feet travels as far as the Assam bigha does, and no further.
How many bighas is 1 pura? Four. Six judgments say so, the earliest a Supreme Court judgment of 1961 and the most recent a Gauhati High Court judgment of January 2026. Three of the six state it as arithmetic rather than as a definition (79 puras "equivalent to 316 bighas", "two Puras (8 Bighas)", "24 bighas of land (6 puras of land)"), and each divides to exactly four.
How many square feet is 1 pura? 57,600, four Assam bighas of 14,400, which is 6,400 square yards and 5,351.215104 square metres exactly. That figure is graded reported, not sourced in this series: no instrument, judgment or manual states it. It rests on the Assam bigha, whose own authority is the twelve-foot mauzadari jar in the Assam Land Records Manual.
Does any Indian law define the pura? No. Fifty-two statutory documents contain the word and the ten highest-ranked are village names, a Jammu constituency, Siddha and homoeopathy regulations. Bound to bigha, the entire statute book returns a single document, a 1957 Rajasthan colonisation rule, and that hit is a village name. The unit has judicial support and no legislative existence.
How many pura in 1 acre? 0.75625, exactly. Turned the other way it recurs: one pura is 1.3223140495867768595041… acres, repeating with a period of twenty-two digits, because an acre carries 11² and a pura does not clear it.
Where is the pura used? Assam, and Nagaland. Every judgment behind this page comes from those two states or from an appeal out of them. A pura in a Rajasthani, Delhi or Jammu document is part of a place name, the word is Sanskrit for a town, and is not an area at all.
How many katha and lessa in a pura? 20 Assam katha, 400 lessa. Both exact, because the whole Assam ladder is built by squaring one twelve-foot rod: a lessa is that rod squared, a bigha is ten rods on a side, and a pura is twenty. The chain and its evidence are set out with the katha and the lessa themselves.
Is a Nagaland pura the same size as an Assam one? Not established, and this page does not claim it. The 2026 Kohima judgment states its own 4:1 ratio and that ratio is used here. What it does not state is which bigha it means, and Nagaland is not on the Assam revenue chain. Establish the local bigha before converting a Dimapur allotment into square feet.
Is the pura the same as the cawnie? On the published value of each, yes, both are put at 57,600 square feet, and no instrument states either figure. What this page adds is a test rather than a restatement: a 1974 Madras judgment's own arithmetic confines the cawnie to a window 0.187% wide, and 57,600 sits inside it. They are unrelated units at opposite ends of the country and the coincidence has no significance beyond the arithmetic. The contrast does: the cawnie is stated in a Union statute, The Kalakshetra Foundation Act, 1993, and the pura is stated in none.
Why does 240 keep appearing? Because a pura is a 240-foot square, twenty twelve-foot rods on a side. The window the 1974 judgment confines a cawnie to contains that same square, and the Madras ground of 2,400 square feet divides it exactly twenty-four times. 1 pura = 24 grounds = 800 ankanam = 1,280 chatak = 6,400 gajam, all exact.
Can a figure in puras identify my plot? No: an area is not a boundary, and this unit has no instrument prescribing how it is measured. Establish the dag or khasra number, the four boundaries from the deed, and the local bigha, and only then convert. A 2025 judgment on exactly this failure in another hill unit is set out with the nali.
The evidence grade, stated first, and it splits in two. In this series a figure is graded sourced only where a named instrument, judgment or manual states it. The pura's ratio, four bighas, is sourced: six named judgments state it, three of them arithmetically, across sixty-five years. The pura's area in square feet is reported, not sourced: no instrument, judgment or manual states 57,600 square feet, and the figure is four Assam bighas, whose own authority is a survey manual's rod rather than a definition of this unit. This series previously graded the pura not_found and carried a note saying no government source for it existed anywhere. That was wrong, and this research is the correction.
Documents.
Counting, and why it is done differently here. This unit's headword is the Sanskrit for a town, so it is the second element of village and colony names across much of India, Rajasthan, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir and Assam all appear in the hits below. A bare count of it measures Indian toponymy. In the Gauhati High Court the bare word returns 708 documents and the word bound to bigha returns 26, and the ten highest-ranked bare hits are a bus driver, two Rajasthani addresses, a Jammu tehsil and a Lance Naik. No bare count of this word carries an argument anywhere on this page. Queries were run singly on 10 September 2026, because the database treats bare terms as an AND and does not read OR; the filter was validated before use, a nonsense term under doctypes:gauhati returning nothing at all. A count of documents is not a count of transactions, and an English-language legal database does not reach a chitha entry or a village council register. 26 is a floor on one court's record, not a measurement of Assam.
Arithmetic. Everything on the Assam ladder is a whole number because the ladder is one twelve-foot rod squared and then scaled by whole numbers: 144, 14,400, 57,600. The metric values terminate because the foot is 0.3048 metre exactly. The single exception is the acre, 160⁄121, and it recurs in one direction and terminates in the other, which is the 11² traced back to the rod the acre is built on. Where a figure ends in an ellipsis on this page it has been cut short rather than rounded up into, so the last digit shown is a digit that is there. Everything is held as a ratio of whole numbers and turned into a decimal only when printed; the conversion core below was re-derived by a second program that had no hand in writing it.
Computed here and stated in no source. Each is arithmetic on figures the documents themselves carry: the 47 bighas and 676,800 square feet of the Nagaland recital; the 115,200 square feet of the two puras in Md. Salak Uddin; the middle base of 16 in the 1974 notation, derived twice, from the carry and from the acre gloss; the three surviving candidates for the third base and the two that nest; the square-foot windows the cawnie is confined to; the 13,392 square feet by which the 2021 figure exceeds forty cawnies; and the 10,080 and 33,480 square feet that rounding 1.322314… to two places costs or gains on a hundred puras.
Searched for and not found, and asserted nowhere. Any Act, rule, regulation, manual or notification defining the pura, or stating it in bighas, kathas, square feet or square metres · any statement of the pura at a value other than four bighas (none was found, and the six that state it agree · the area of a Nagaland pura, the local bigha being unestablished and not asserted · the Assamese or Nagamese script forms of the word, and whether the Nagaland usage is a loan from Assam or independent) no inference is drawn from the fact that both use it · the names of the second and third places in the 1974 Madras notation, whose ratios are derived here and whose names are not · which of the two surviving third-place bases, 240 or 256, is correct (one judgment cannot separate them · the patta underlying the 2021 Narasimulu Naidu figure, which would settle whether 1.33 is a rounding or a different cawnie · whether the Kalakshetra Foundation Act schedule is internally consistent with the 1974 window · whether the 1912 and 1922 reports that count in puras in the Calcutta and Bombay courts are on the same chain) they were located and are not used · any connection between the pura's 57,600 square feet and the cawnie's, which is treated here as a coincidence because nothing suggests otherwise.
A limit on four of the six pura quotations. The 1971 Supreme Court judgment and the 2026 Kohima judgment were read in full; so were the two Madras cawnie judgments. The 1961, 1986, 2023 and 2024 quotations are snippets from search-result listings, not full-text reads. Each was returned by a query narrow enough to identify one document, and each is reproduced exactly as the listing printed it, but the surrounding paragraph was not read, so the context around those four words is not vouched for here. The ratio does not rest on any one of them: the two figures that carry it arithmetically, 316 ÷ 79 and 24 ÷ 6, both come from judgments read in full.
A limit on the cawnie recital evidence. The eleven cawnie recitals behind the ground-and-residue observation in the research record are snippets from search-result listings, not full-text reads. They are consistent with a ground of 2,400 square feet, twenty-four to the cawnie, and one of them fails that carry: "5 cawnies 24 grounds and 1396 sq.ft.", which is reported rather than dropped. The 24-grounds-to-a-pura line on this page does not rest on them; it rests on the Ground page's statutory ground of 2,400 square feet dividing 57,600 exactly.
On the sibling pages. The Bigha page owns the regional bighas and how far apart they are; the Katha page and the Lessa page own the Assam ladder and the twelve-foot mauzadari jar this page's every whole number comes from; the Chatak page owns the carry-behaviour method and the Barak Valley exception; the Nali page owns what an area figure cannot do and what a nine-observation carry test is worth; the Dhur page owns the grading standard and the practice of stating a bound instead of a value; the Ground page owns the ground; the Square Mile page owns the rod that puts the eleven in the acre. All are cited and none is restated.
| Conversion | 1 Pura | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Acre | 1.322314 | Recurring; Exact by definition: 43,560 sq ft = 4,840 sq yd |
| Ankanam | 800 (Standard) | Region-specific; also 1,600 (Tirupati) |
| Ares | 53.51215104 | Exact; 100 m², the metric are |
| Bigha | 4 (West Bengal / Assam / Jharkhand) | Region-specific; also 2.115702 (UP pucca / Bihar / Rajasthan pucca) · 6.347107 (UP kachha (6⅔ biswa)) · 8.46281 (UP kachha (5 biswa) / Uttarakhand hills) |
| Biswa | 42.31405 (UP / Rajasthan pucca) | Region-specific; also 66.115702 (Rajasthan kachha) · 126.942149 (Punjab / Haryana old records) · 132.231405 (Himachal Pradesh) |
| Biswa Kacha | 126.942149 (Punjab / Haryana revenue definition) | Region-specific; also 66.115702 (Rajasthan kachha reading) |
| Cent | 132.231405 | Recurring; One hundredth of an acre, exactly |
| Chatak | 1,280 | Exact; 5 sq yd exactly; 16 to the cottah, 968 to the acre. Reported, not stated by any instrument located |
| Decimal | 132.231405 | Recurring; One hundredth of an acre, exactly |
| Dhur | 16,000 (Tripura) | Region-specific; also 846.280992 (Bihar / Jharkhand (Patna chain)) |
| Dismil | 132.231405 | Recurring; The decimal under another name |
| Gaj | 6,400 | Exact; The square yard, 9 sq ft |
| Gajam | 6,400 | Exact; The square yard in Telugu, 9 sq ft |
| Ground | 24 | Exact; Tamil Nadu Urban Land Tax Act 1966, s.2(8-A): "an area comprising two hundred and twenty three square metres (two thousand and four hundred square feet)" |
| Guntha | 52.892562 | Recurring; 121 sq yd; 40 guntha = 1 acre exactly |
| Hectare | 0.5351215104 | Exact; 10,000 m² exactly |
| Kanal | 10.578512 (Standard (66-inch karam)) | Region-specific; also 12.8 (Majha belt (60-inch karam)) · 13.93724 (Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam)) · 15.802469 (Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam)) |
| Katha | 20 (Assam) | Region-specific; also 42.31405 (Bihar state standard) · 80 (West Bengal / Jharkhand) · 33.057851 (Bihar (Chhapra)) |
| Killa | 1.322314 | Recurring; The acre under its Punjabi name |
| Lessa | 400 | Exact; The 12-foot mauzadari jar squared (Assam Land Records Manual r.117); 20 to a katha, 100 to a bigha |
| Marla | 211.570248 (Standard (66-inch karam)) | Region-specific; also 256 (Majha belt (60-inch karam)) · 278.744802 (Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam)) · 316.049383 (Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam)) |
| Murabba | 0.052893 (Punjab canal colony) | Region-specific; also 0.084628 (Rajasthan (Indira Gandhi Canal)) |
| Nali | 26.666667 | Recurring; 240 sq yd; 16 mutthi of 135 sq ft. No instrument located states the figure |
| Perch | 211.570248 | Recurring; 30.25 sq yd; 160 perches = 1 acre |
| Square Centimeter | 53,512,151.04 | Exact; One ten-thousandth of a square metre |
| Square Feet | 57,600 | Exact; The base of this series |
| Square Inch | 8,294,400 | Exact; One 144th of a square foot |
| Square Karam | 1,904.132231 (Standard (66-inch karam)) | Region-specific; also 2,304 (Majha belt (60-inch karam)) · 2,508.703214 (Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam)) · 2,844.444444 (Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam)) |
| Square Kilometer | 0.005351215104 | Exact; 1,000,000 m² |
| Square Meter | 5,351.215104 | Exact; The SI unit of area |
| Square Mile | 0.002066 | Recurring; Standards of Weights and Measures Act 1976, Schedule (see s.79): "1 square mile = 2 589 988.110 336 square metres"; 640 acres exactly |
| Square Yard | 6,400 | Exact; 9 sq ft exactly |
1 pura = 1.322314 acres, recurring. An acre is exact by definition: 43,560 sq ft = 4,840 sq yd.
Computed on the pura of 57,600 square feet, which this series grades reported, not sourced: no instrument, judgment or manual located states that figure.
1.3223… acres to the pura, recurring. A pura is the largest traditional unit in the North East still quoted in ordinary sale talk, and the figure most often seen rounded to 1.32.
The ratio is the fraction 160/121, 1.32231405…, which recurs.
Acre = Pura ÷ 0.75625
| Pura | Acre |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1.322314 |
| 2 | 2.644628 |
| 3 | 3.966942 |
| 5 | 6.61157 |
| 10 | 13.22314 |
| 20 | 26.446281 |
| 50 | 66.115702 |
| 100 | 132.231405 |
| 200 | 264.46281 |
| 500 | 661.157025 |
| 1,000 | 1,322.31405 |
5 pura ÷ 0.75625 = 6.61157 acres
Pura = Acre × 0.75625
1 pura = 4 bigha on the West Bengal / Assam / Jharkhand definition. The bigha has no single national value. It is also 2.115702 (UP pucca / Bihar / Rajasthan pucca) · 6.347107 (UP kachha (6⅔ biswa)) · 8.46281 (UP kachha (5 biswa) / Uttarakhand hills) and 5 more per pura. Every definition this series has located is set out with the evidence behind it.
Computed on the pura of 57,600 square feet, which this series grades reported, not sourced: no instrument, judgment or manual located states that figure.
A pura is four Assam bigha of 14,400 sq ft. That is the only definition this series located, and it is convention rather than instrument: no Assam rule, manual or judgment stating it was found.
Where the bigha fits into the pura's own record is set out in Pura to Bigha, Katha, Lessa and Square Feet above; what follows is the arithmetic.
Bigha = Pura × 4 (West Bengal / Assam / Jharkhand)
| Pura | Bigha (West Bengal / Assam / Jharkhand) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 4 |
| 2 | 8 |
| 3 | 12 |
| 5 | 20 |
| 10 | 40 |
| 20 | 80 |
| 50 | 200 |
| 100 | 400 |
| 200 | 800 |
| 500 | 2,000 |
| 1,000 | 4,000 |
| Bigha definition | Where it applies | 1 bigha in sq ft | Bigha per pura | Terminates? | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UP pucca / Bihar / Rajasthan pucca | Purvanchal, Awadh, Patna belt, east Rajasthan | 27,225 | 2.115702 | Recurring | sourced |
| UP kachha (6⅔ biswa) | West Uttar Pradesh | 9,075 | 6.347107 | Recurring | sourced |
| UP kachha (5 biswa) / Uttarakhand hills | West UP, Kumaon and Garhwal hills | 6,806.25 | 8.46281 | Recurring | sourced |
| Rajasthan kachha / Gujarat vigha / Uttarakhand Terai | Marwar, Gujarat, Terai | 17,424 | 3.305785 | Recurring | sourced |
| Madhya Pradesh | Madhya Pradesh | 12,000 | 4.8 | Exact | reported, not sourced |
| West Bengal / Assam / Jharkhand (the definition used here) | West Bengal, Assam, Ranchi | 14,400 | 4 | Exact | sourced |
| Himachal Pradesh / Haryana Rohtak belt | Himachal Pradesh, Rohtak, Hisar | 8,712 | 6.61157 | Recurring | sourced |
| Punjab / west Haryana | Punjab, kanal belt of Haryana | 21,780 | 2.644628 | Recurring | sourced |
| Haryana Ambala belt | Ambala, Gurugram, Faridabad, Karnal, Panipat | 8,100 | 7.111111 | Recurring | sourced |
Not every definition above rests on an instrument. 1 of the 9 are marked reported or no instrument located: in circulation and internally consistent, but this series could not find a rule, manual or judgment stating them. What was searched for each is recorded with that unit. Terminates? answers only whether the ratio has a finite decimal, not whether the figure behind it is verified.
To convert against one of the other definitions, multiply by its factor.
5 pura × 4 = 20 bigha
Pura = Bigha × 0.25 (West Bengal / Assam / Jharkhand)
Pura = Bigha × 0.47265625 (UP pucca / Bihar / Rajasthan pucca)
Pura = Bigha × 121/768 (UP kachha (6⅔ biswa))
Pura = Bigha × 0.1181640625 (UP kachha (5 biswa) / Uttarakhand hills)
Pura = Bigha × 0.3025 (Rajasthan kachha / Gujarat vigha / Uttarakhand Terai)
Pura = Bigha ÷ 4.8 (Madhya Pradesh)
Pura = Bigha × 0.15125 (Himachal Pradesh / Haryana Rohtak belt)
Pura = Bigha × 0.378125 (Punjab / west Haryana)
Pura = Bigha × 0.140625 (Haryana Ambala belt)
1 pura = 16,000 dhur on the Tripura definition. The dhur has no single national value. It is also 846.280992 (Bihar / Jharkhand (Patna chain)) per pura. Every definition this series has located is set out with the evidence behind it.
Computed on the pura of 57,600 square feet, which this series grades reported, not sourced: no instrument, judgment or manual located states that figure.
Dhur = Pura × 16,000 (Tripura)
| Pura | Dhur (Tripura) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 16,000 |
| 2 | 32,000 |
| 3 | 48,000 |
| 5 | 80,000 |
| 10 | 160,000 |
| 20 | 320,000 |
| 50 | 800,000 |
| 100 | 1,600,000 |
| 200 | 3,200,000 |
| 500 | 8,000,000 |
| 1,000 | 16,000,000 |
| Dhur definition | Where it applies | 1 dhur in sq ft | Dhur per pura | Terminates? | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bihar / Jharkhand (Patna chain) | Patna belt, and Jharkhand districts counting in the Patna katha | 68.0625 | 846.280992 | Recurring | reported, not sourced |
| Tripura (the definition used here) | Tripura | 3.6 | 16,000 | Exact | sourced |
Not every definition above rests on an instrument. 1 of the 2 are marked reported or no instrument located: in circulation and internally consistent, but this series could not find a rule, manual or judgment stating them. What was searched for each is recorded with that unit. Terminates? answers only whether the ratio has a finite decimal, not whether the figure behind it is verified.
| Pura | Dhur (68.0625 sq ft) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 846.280992 |
| 2 | 1,692.561983 |
| 3 | 2,538.842975 |
| 5 | 4,231.404959 |
| 10 | 8,462.809917 |
| 20 | 16,925.619835 |
| 50 | 42,314.049587 |
| 100 | 84,628.099174 |
| 200 | 169,256.198347 |
| 500 | 423,140.495868 |
| 1,000 | 846,280.991736 |
5 pura × 16,000 = 80,000 dhur
Pura = Dhur × 0.0000625 (Tripura)
Pura = Dhur × 0.001181640625 (Bihar / Jharkhand (Patna chain))
1 pura = 0.5351215104 hectares, exact. A hectare is 10,000 m² exactly.
Computed on the pura of 57,600 square feet, which this series grades reported, not sourced: no instrument, judgment or manual located states that figure.
0.535 hectares to the pura. Assam's record of rights is metric; the pura appears in conversation and in older deeds, and this is the figure that reconciles the two.
The ratio is the fraction 5,225,796/9,765,625, or 0.5351215104 exactly.
Hectare = Pura × 0.5351215104
| Pura | Hectare |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.5351215104 |
| 2 | 1.0702430208 |
| 3 | 1.6053645312 |
| 5 | 2.675607552 |
| 10 | 5.351215104 |
| 20 | 10.702430208 |
| 50 | 26.75607552 |
| 100 | 53.51215104 |
| 200 | 107.02430208 |
| 500 | 267.5607552 |
| 1,000 | 535.1215104 |
5 pura × 0.5351215104 = 2.675607552 hectares
Pura = Hectare ÷ 0.5351215104
1 pura = 20 katha on the Assam definition. The katha has no single national value. It is also 42.31405 (Bihar state standard) · 80 (West Bengal / Jharkhand) · 33.057851 (Bihar (Chhapra)) and 2 more per pura. Every definition this series has located is set out with the evidence behind it.
Computed on the pura of 57,600 square feet, which this series grades reported, not sourced: no instrument, judgment or manual located states that figure.
Twenty Assam katha to the pura, because five katha make an Assam bigha and four bigha make a pura. The Assam katha is 2,880 sq ft, four times the Bengal one, so a Bengal reading of this chain is out by a factor of four at every step.
Where the katha fits into the pura's own record is set out in Pura to Bigha, Katha, Lessa and Square Feet above; what follows is the arithmetic.
Katha = Pura × 20 (Assam)
| Pura | Katha (Assam) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 20 |
| 2 | 40 |
| 3 | 60 |
| 5 | 100 |
| 10 | 200 |
| 20 | 400 |
| 50 | 1,000 |
| 100 | 2,000 |
| 200 | 4,000 |
| 500 | 10,000 |
| 1,000 | 20,000 |
| Katha definition | Where it applies | 1 katha in sq ft | Katha per pura | Terminates? | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bihar state standard | Patna, Arrah | 1,361.25 | 42.31405 | Recurring | sourced |
| West Bengal / Jharkhand | Rural West Bengal, Ranchi | 720 | 80 | Exact | sourced |
| Assam (the definition used here) | Assam (except Barak Valley) | 2,880 | 20 | Exact | sourced |
| Bihar (Chhapra) | Saran | 1,742.4 | 33.057851 | Recurring | sourced |
| Bihar (Hajipur) | Vaishali | 1,901.25 | 30.295858 | Recurring | sourced |
| Bihar (Bettiah) | West Champaran | 3,267 | 17.630854 | Recurring | sourced |
To convert against one of the other definitions, multiply by its factor.
5 pura × 20 = 100 katha
Pura = Katha × 0.05 (Assam)
Pura = Katha × 0.0236328125 (Bihar state standard)
Pura = Katha × 0.0125 (West Bengal / Jharkhand)
Pura = Katha × 0.03025 (Bihar (Chhapra))
Pura = Katha × 0.0330078125 (Bihar (Hajipur))
Pura = Katha × 0.05671875 (Bihar (Bettiah))
1 pura = 400 lessa, exact. A lessa is the 12-foot mauzadari jar squared (Assam Land Records Manual r.117); 20 to a katha, 100 to a bigha.
Computed on the pura of 57,600 square feet, which this series grades reported, not sourced: no instrument, judgment or manual located states that figure.
Four hundred lessa to the pura, twenty lessa to the katha, five katha to the bigha, four bigha to the pura. The whole Assam chain is whole numbers from the lessa up, which is why an Assam deed rarely carries a fraction.
Where the lessa fits into the pura's own record is set out in Pura to Bigha, Katha, Lessa and Square Feet above; what follows is the arithmetic.
Lessa = Pura × 400
| Pura | Lessa |
|---|---|
| 1 | 400 |
| 2 | 800 |
| 3 | 1,200 |
| 5 | 2,000 |
| 10 | 4,000 |
| 20 | 8,000 |
| 50 | 20,000 |
| 100 | 40,000 |
| 200 | 80,000 |
| 500 | 200,000 |
| 1,000 | 400,000 |
5 pura × 400 = 2,000 lessa
Pura = Lessa × 0.0025
1 pura = 57,600 square feet, exact. A square foot is the base of this series.
Computed on the pura of 57,600 square feet, which this series grades reported, not sourced: no instrument, judgment or manual located states that figure.
57,600 square feet on the Assam reading, four bigha of 14,400. The attestation is weak: this series located the value in circulation but no Assam instrument defining it.
Where the square foot fits into the pura's own record is set out in Pura to Bigha, Katha, Lessa and Square Feet above; what follows is the arithmetic.
Square Feet = Pura × 57,600
| Pura | Square Feet |
|---|---|
| 1 | 57,600 |
| 2 | 115,200 |
| 3 | 172,800 |
| 5 | 288,000 |
| 10 | 576,000 |
| 20 | 1,152,000 |
| 50 | 2,880,000 |
| 100 | 5,760,000 |
| 200 | 11,520,000 |
| 500 | 28,800,000 |
| 1,000 | 57,600,000 |
5 pura × 57,600 = 288,000 square feet
Pura = Square Feet ÷ 57,600
1 pura = 5,351.215104 square metres, exact. A square metre is the SI unit of area.
Computed on the pura of 57,600 square feet, which this series grades reported, not sourced: no instrument, judgment or manual located states that figure.
The ratio is the fraction 83,612,736/15,625, or 5,351.215104 exactly.
Square Meter = Pura × 5,351.215104
| Pura | Square Meter |
|---|---|
| 1 | 5,351.215104 |
| 2 | 10,702.430208 |
| 3 | 16,053.645312 |
| 5 | 26,756.07552 |
| 10 | 53,512.15104 |
| 20 | 107,024.30208 |
| 50 | 267,560.7552 |
| 100 | 535,121.5104 |
| 200 | 1,070,243.0208 |
| 500 | 2,675,607.552 |
| 1,000 | 5,351,215.104 |
5 pura × 5,351.215104 = 26,756.07552 square metres
Pura = Square Meter ÷ 5,351.215104
Exactness of the method is not exactness of the result: where a ratio does not terminate, the table says so and the formula gives the fraction.
1 pura = 800 ankanam on the Standard definition; 1,600 on the Tirupati definition. Ankanam = Pura × 800 (Standard) · reverse Pura = Ankanam × 0.00125
| Pura | Ankanam (Standard) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 800 |
| 2 | 1,600 |
| 3 | 2,400 |
| 5 | 4,000 |
| 10 | 8,000 |
| 20 | 16,000 |
| 50 | 40,000 |
| 100 | 80,000 |
| 200 | 160,000 |
| 500 | 400,000 |
| 1,000 | 800,000 |
Every definition as a factor. Multiply pura by the figure shown.
| Ankanam definition | Where | Ankanam per pura |
|---|---|---|
| Standard (the definition used here) | Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, parts of Karnataka | 800 |
| Tirupati | Tirupati and parts of Chittoor | 1,600 |
1 pura = 42.31405 biswa on the UP / Rajasthan pucca definition; 66.115702 on the Rajasthan kachha definition · 126.942149 on the Punjab / Haryana old records definition · 132.231405 on the Himachal Pradesh definition. Biswa = Pura ÷ 0.0236328125 (UP / Rajasthan pucca) · reverse Pura = Biswa × 0.0236328125
| Pura | Biswa (UP / Rajasthan pucca) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 42.31405 |
| 2 | 84.628099 |
| 3 | 126.942149 |
| 5 | 211.570248 |
| 10 | 423.140496 |
| 20 | 846.280992 |
| 50 | 2,115.702479 |
| 100 | 4,231.404959 |
| 200 | 8,462.809917 |
| 500 | 21,157.024793 |
| 1,000 | 42,314.049587 |
Every definition as a factor. Multiply pura by the figure shown.
| Biswa definition | Where | Biswa per pura |
|---|---|---|
| UP / Rajasthan pucca (the definition used here) | Uttar Pradesh, east Rajasthan | 42.31405 |
| Rajasthan kachha; no instrument located | Marwar | 66.115702 |
| Punjab / Haryana old records | Punjab, Haryana | 126.942149 |
| Himachal Pradesh; no instrument located | Himachal Pradesh | 132.231405 |
1 pura = 126.942149 biswa kacha on the Punjab / Haryana revenue definition; 66.115702 on the Rajasthan kachha reading definition. Biswa Kacha = Pura × 15,360/121 (Punjab / Haryana revenue) · reverse Pura = Biswa Kacha × 121/15,360
| Pura | Biswa Kacha (Punjab / Haryana revenue) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 126.942149 |
| 2 | 253.884298 |
| 3 | 380.826446 |
| 5 | 634.710744 |
| 10 | 1,269.421488 |
| 20 | 2,538.842975 |
| 50 | 6,347.107438 |
| 100 | 12,694.214876 |
| 200 | 25,388.429752 |
| 500 | 63,471.07438 |
| 1,000 | 126,942.14876 |
Every definition as a factor. Multiply pura by the figure shown.
| Biswa Kacha definition | Where | Biswa Kacha per pura |
|---|---|---|
| Punjab / Haryana revenue definition (the definition used here) | Punjab, Haryana | 126.942149 |
| Rajasthan kachha reading; no instrument located | Marwar | 66.115702 |
1 pura = 10.578512 kanal on the Standard (66-inch karam) definition; 12.8 on the Majha belt (60-inch karam) definition · 13.93724 on the Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam) definition · 15.802469 on the Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam) definition. Kanal = Pura ÷ 0.09453125 (Standard (66-inch karam)) · reverse Pura = Kanal × 0.09453125
| Pura | Kanal (Standard (66-inch karam)) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 10.578512 |
| 2 | 21.157025 |
| 3 | 31.735537 |
| 5 | 52.892562 |
| 10 | 105.785124 |
| 20 | 211.570248 |
| 50 | 528.92562 |
| 100 | 1,057.85124 |
| 200 | 2,115.702479 |
| 500 | 5,289.256198 |
| 1,000 | 10,578.512397 |
Every definition as a factor. Multiply pura by the figure shown.
| Kanal definition | Where | Kanal per pura |
|---|---|---|
| Standard (66-inch karam) (the definition used here) | Most of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal, J&K | 10.578512 |
| Majha belt (60-inch karam); reported, not sourced | Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Tarn Taran | 12.8 |
| Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam); reported, not sourced | Jalandhar, Kapurthala and Hoshiarpur, and Kangra in Himachal | 13.93724 |
| Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam); reported, not sourced | Parts of Kapurthala | 15.802469 |
1 pura = 211.570248 marla on the Standard (66-inch karam) definition; 256 on the Majha belt (60-inch karam) definition · 278.744802 on the Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam) definition · 316.049383 on the Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam) definition · 256 on the HSVP urban estate definition. Marla = Pura ÷ 0.0047265625 (Standard (66-inch karam)) · reverse Pura = Marla × 0.0047265625
| Pura | Marla (Standard (66-inch karam)) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 211.570248 |
| 2 | 423.140496 |
| 3 | 634.710744 |
| 5 | 1,057.85124 |
| 10 | 2,115.702479 |
| 20 | 4,231.404959 |
| 50 | 10,578.512397 |
| 100 | 21,157.024793 |
| 200 | 42,314.049587 |
| 500 | 105,785.123967 |
| 1,000 | 211,570.247934 |
Every definition as a factor. Multiply pura by the figure shown.
| Marla definition | Where | Marla per pura |
|---|---|---|
| Standard (66-inch karam) (the definition used here) | Most of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal, J&K | 211.570248 |
| Majha belt (60-inch karam); reported, not sourced | Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Tarn Taran | 256 |
| Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam); reported, not sourced | Jalandhar, Kapurthala and Hoshiarpur, and Kangra in Himachal | 278.744802 |
| Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam); reported, not sourced | Parts of Kapurthala | 316.049383 |
| HSVP urban estate | Haryana urban estates | 256 |
1 pura = 0.052893 murabba on the Punjab canal colony definition; 0.084628 on the Rajasthan (Indira Gandhi Canal) definition. Murabba = Pura ÷ 18.90625 (Punjab canal colony) · reverse Pura = Murabba × 18.90625
| Pura | Murabba (Punjab canal colony) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.052893 |
| 2 | 0.105785 |
| 3 | 0.158678 |
| 5 | 0.264463 |
| 10 | 0.528926 |
| 20 | 1.057851 |
| 50 | 2.644628 |
| 100 | 5.289256 |
| 200 | 10.578512 |
| 500 | 26.446281 |
| 1,000 | 52.892562 |
Every definition as a factor. Multiply pura by the figure shown.
| Murabba definition | Where | Murabba per pura |
|---|---|---|
| Punjab canal colony (the definition used here); reported, not sourced | Punjab, Haryana canal colonies | 0.052893 |
| Rajasthan (Indira Gandhi Canal) | Sri Ganganagar, Hanumangarh, Bikaner, Jaisalmer | 0.084628 |
1 pura = 1,904.132231 square karam on the Standard (66-inch karam) definition; 2,304 on the Majha belt (60-inch karam) definition · 2,508.703214 on the Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam) definition · 2,844.444444 on the Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam) definition. Square Karam = Pura × 230,400/121 (Standard (66-inch karam)) · reverse Pura = Square Karam × 121/230,400
| Pura | Square Karam (Standard (66-inch karam)) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1,904.132231 |
| 2 | 3,808.264463 |
| 3 | 5,712.396694 |
| 5 | 9,520.661157 |
| 10 | 19,041.322314 |
| 20 | 38,082.644628 |
| 50 | 95,206.61157 |
| 100 | 190,413.22314 |
| 200 | 380,826.446281 |
| 500 | 952,066.115702 |
| 1,000 | 1,904,132.231405 |
Every definition as a factor. Multiply pura by the figure shown.
| Square Karam definition | Where | Square Karam per pura |
|---|---|---|
| Standard (66-inch karam) (the definition used here) | Most of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal, J&K | 1,904.132231 |
| Majha belt (60-inch karam); reported, not sourced | Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Tarn Taran | 2,304 |
| Doaba belt (57.5-inch karam); reported, not sourced | Jalandhar, Kapurthala and Hoshiarpur, and Kangra in Himachal | 2,508.703214 |
| Kapurthala belt (54-inch karam); reported, not sourced | Parts of Kapurthala | 2,844.444444 |
1 pura = 53.51215104 ares (exact). Ares = Pura × 53.51215104 · reverse Pura = Ares ÷ 53.51215104
| Pura | Ares |
|---|---|
| 1 | 53.51215104 |
| 2 | 107.02430208 |
| 3 | 160.53645312 |
| 5 | 267.5607552 |
| 10 | 535.1215104 |
| 20 | 1,070.2430208 |
| 50 | 2,675.607552 |
| 100 | 5,351.215104 |
| 200 | 10,702.430208 |
| 500 | 26,756.07552 |
| 1,000 | 53,512.15104 |
1 pura = 132.231405 cent (recurring). Cent = Pura ÷ 0.0075625 · reverse Pura = Cent × 0.0075625
| Pura | Cent |
|---|---|
| 1 | 132.231405 |
| 2 | 264.46281 |
| 3 | 396.694215 |
| 5 | 661.157025 |
| 10 | 1,322.31405 |
| 20 | 2,644.628099 |
| 50 | 6,611.570248 |
| 100 | 13,223.140496 |
| 200 | 26,446.280992 |
| 500 | 66,115.702479 |
| 1,000 | 132,231.404959 |
1 pura = 1,280 chatak (exact). Chatak = Pura × 1,280 · reverse Pura = Chatak × 0.00078125
| Pura | Chatak |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1,280 |
| 2 | 2,560 |
| 3 | 3,840 |
| 5 | 6,400 |
| 10 | 12,800 |
| 20 | 25,600 |
| 50 | 64,000 |
| 100 | 128,000 |
| 200 | 256,000 |
| 500 | 640,000 |
| 1,000 | 1,280,000 |
1 pura = 6,400 gaj (exact). Gaj = Pura × 6,400 · reverse Pura = Gaj × 0.00015625
| Pura | Gaj |
|---|---|
| 1 | 6,400 |
| 2 | 12,800 |
| 3 | 19,200 |
| 5 | 32,000 |
| 10 | 64,000 |
| 20 | 128,000 |
| 50 | 320,000 |
| 100 | 640,000 |
| 200 | 1,280,000 |
| 500 | 3,200,000 |
| 1,000 | 6,400,000 |
1 pura = 24 ground (exact). Ground = Pura × 24 · reverse Pura = Ground ÷ 24
| Pura | Ground |
|---|---|
| 1 | 24 |
| 2 | 48 |
| 3 | 72 |
| 5 | 120 |
| 10 | 240 |
| 20 | 480 |
| 50 | 1,200 |
| 100 | 2,400 |
| 200 | 4,800 |
| 500 | 12,000 |
| 1,000 | 24,000 |
1 pura = 52.892562 guntha (recurring). Guntha = Pura ÷ 0.01890625 · reverse Pura = Guntha × 0.01890625
| Pura | Guntha |
|---|---|
| 1 | 52.892562 |
| 2 | 105.785124 |
| 3 | 158.677686 |
| 5 | 264.46281 |
| 10 | 528.92562 |
| 20 | 1,057.85124 |
| 50 | 2,644.628099 |
| 100 | 5,289.256198 |
| 200 | 10,578.512397 |
| 500 | 26,446.280992 |
| 1,000 | 52,892.561983 |
1 pura = 26.666667 nali (recurring). Nali = Pura ÷ 0.0375 · reverse Pura = Nali × 0.0375
| Pura | Nali |
|---|---|
| 1 | 26.666667 |
| 2 | 53.333333 |
| 3 | 80 |
| 5 | 133.333333 |
| 10 | 266.666667 |
| 20 | 533.333333 |
| 50 | 1,333.333333 |
| 100 | 2,666.666667 |
| 200 | 5,333.333333 |
| 500 | 13,333.333333 |
| 1,000 | 26,666.666667 |
1 pura = 53,512,151.04 square centimeter (exact). Square Centimeter = Pura × 53,512,151.04 · reverse Pura = Square Centimeter ÷ 53,512,151.04
| Pura | Square Centimeter |
|---|---|
| 1 | 53,512,151.04 |
| 2 | 107,024,302.08 |
| 3 | 160,536,453.12 |
| 5 | 267,560,755.2 |
| 10 | 535,121,510.4 |
| 20 | 1,070,243,020.8 |
| 50 | 2,675,607,552 |
| 100 | 5,351,215,104 |
| 200 | 10,702,430,208 |
| 500 | 26,756,075,520 |
| 1,000 | 53,512,151,040 |
1 pura = 8,294,400 square inch (exact). Square Inch = Pura × 8,294,400 · reverse Pura = Square Inch ÷ 8,294,400
| Pura | Square Inch |
|---|---|
| 1 | 8,294,400 |
| 2 | 16,588,800 |
| 3 | 24,883,200 |
| 5 | 41,472,000 |
| 10 | 82,944,000 |
| 20 | 165,888,000 |
| 50 | 414,720,000 |
| 100 | 829,440,000 |
| 200 | 1,658,880,000 |
| 500 | 4,147,200,000 |
| 1,000 | 8,294,400,000 |
1 pura = 0.005351215104 square kilometer (exact). Square Kilometer = Pura × 0.005351215104 · reverse Pura = Square Kilometer ÷ 0.005351215104
| Pura | Square Kilometer |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.005351215104 |
| 2 | 0.010702430208 |
| 3 | 0.016053645312 |
| 5 | 0.02675607552 |
| 10 | 0.05351215104 |
| 20 | 0.10702430208 |
| 50 | 0.2675607552 |
| 100 | 0.5351215104 |
| 200 | 1.0702430208 |
| 500 | 2.675607552 |
| 1,000 | 5.351215104 |
1 pura = 0.002066 square mile (recurring). Square Mile = Pura ÷ 484 · reverse Pura = Square Mile × 484
| Pura | Square Mile |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.002066 |
| 2 | 0.004132 |
| 3 | 0.006198 |
| 5 | 0.010331 |
| 10 | 0.020661 |
| 20 | 0.041322 |
| 50 | 0.103306 |
| 100 | 0.206612 |
| 200 | 0.413223 |
| 500 | 1.033058 |
| 1,000 | 2.066116 |
Six of the thirty-two units are two names for one area with another, so their figures are identical to the last digit.
1 pura = 132.231405 decimal. A decimal and a cent are the same area, 435.6 square feet, so any Pura figure converts to the same number of either. Decimal = Pura ÷ 0.0075625 · reverse Pura = Decimal × 0.0075625
1 pura = 132.231405 dismil. A dismil and a cent are the same area, 435.6 square feet, so any Pura figure converts to the same number of either. Dismil = Pura ÷ 0.0075625 · reverse Pura = Dismil × 0.0075625
1 pura = 6,400 gajam. A gajam and a gaj are the same area, 9 square feet, so any Pura figure converts to the same number of either. Gajam = Pura × 6,400 · reverse Pura = Gajam × 0.00015625
1 pura = 1.322314 killa. A killa and an acre are the same area, 43,560 square feet, so any Pura figure converts to the same number of either. Killa = Pura ÷ 0.75625 · reverse Pura = Killa × 0.75625
1 pura = 211.570248 perches. A perch and a marla are the same area, 272.25 square feet, so any Pura figure converts to the same number of either. Perch = Pura ÷ 0.0047265625 · reverse Pura = Perch × 0.0047265625
1 pura = 6,400 square yards. A square yard and a gaj are the same area, 9 square feet, so any Pura figure converts to the same number of either. Square Yard = Pura × 6,400 · reverse Pura = Square Yard × 0.00015625
The tables above are arithmetic, and for a pura the arithmetic is the easy half. What decides whether the figure you started with is the right one to convert at all is Six Judgments Say Four Bighas. No Statute Says Anything..
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