THE LAST PHASE IN NORTHERN INDIA 175 
whole of the area which was found included in the 
Dependencies held by Chiefs, because, as we have seen, some 
of them had been active in extending their Dependencies 
in the years immediately preceding the establishment of 
British administration; what portion of an estate recognised 
by the law of to-day represents ancient sovereignty, and 
what portion is a modern accretion, is a question of fact 
to be determined separately in each case. We know of 
landholders in Oudh whose estates date only from the 
nineteenth century; of others whose estates were founded 
in the Moslem period; and of others again whose traditions 
carry us even further back. As with the Brotherhood, so 
with the Chief; the institution is one of great antiquity, but 
we must not infer that all Chiefs date from the same period, 
or that their possessions have remained unchanged in 
sxtent. 
gs. CONCLUDING REMARKS 
In order to complete this account of the agrarian system 
2s it existed in Northern India at the end of the eighteenth 
century, it is perhaps desirable to see how the various 
jetails fit in with the facts which have been discussed in 
previous chapters. The village as a unit stands, it will be 
seen, exactly where it stood in the time of Aurangzeb, 
the revenue due from it being assessed, usually for the year, 
at a lump sum of money, fixed with reference to its pro- 
ductive capacity, and intended to represent ordinarily half 
the gross produce, but not distributed by the assessors 
over the individual peasants. Inside the village we find 
the individual peasants contributing to this revenue on one 
or other of the familiar systems, either on an estimate 
(or sometimes a determination) of the produce gathered, 
or by rates on the area sown, or by a lump sum payable for 
the holding. The only apparent novelty is in the method 
of rating; in many cases we find crop-rates exactly like those 
-harged by Sher Shah or Akbar, but with simplified 
schedules: but in others we find rates varying with the soil 
and independent of the crops grown. 
I have not come across any definite evidence to show that 
any of the Moslem administrators who attempted to deal 
with individual peasants in this region, used these soil-rates,