Preface.

THE object and scope of this essay are described sufficiently
in the Introduction, and here it is only necessary to mention
a few points of detail which may be of assistance to the
reader.
I have tried to write in English, and to get away from
the polyglot, and often ambiguous, jargon in which agrarian
topics are commonly treated in India. In order to do this,
I have had to frame a precise terminology, choosing those
names which carry the fewest misleading connotations.
The terms which I have selected for use are printed throughout
 with an initial capital letter, as a tacit reminder to the
reader that they bear the definite sense which has been
explained at their first mention.
It has not, however, been possible to avoid altogether
the introduction of Persian words and phrases, because
the meaning of these frequently requires discussion, and
the subject of the discussion must be indicated. In transliteration
 I have used as a basis the system recommended
by the Council of the Royal Asiatic Society, in which the
vowels have the continental values, and the consonants
are, where necessary, distinguished by lines or dots placed
under them. Unfortunately, these lines and dots, which
are indispensable to the linguistic scholar, are offensive to
ordinary readers, and greatly increase the difficulty of
accurate printing. Since I am writing mainly for students
who are not interested in linguistic details, I have adopted
the following compromise.
(1) In the text, the transliteration is simplified. The
vowels have the continental values, and the long vowels are
marked as such: but the consonants are not distinguished,
except that the otherwise unemployed g¢ is used to represent
a particular Arabic guttural. An inverted comma denotes
the Arabic letter ‘ain, in cases where its indication has
seemed to be desirable.