28 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA

the clerks of the Army Ministry, and so escaped the lability
to serve; sons had been tacitly allowed to succeed their
fathers; the holders lived in their villages as if they were
proprietors; and a claim was now put forward that the
holdings were Grants and not Assignments. The King
passed orders on these reports, resuming the Assignments
of those who were unfit for service, and giving them small
pensions in cash, while the Assignments were continued to
men who were able and willing to perform their duties;
but subsequently these orders were cancelled on a picturesque
appeal ad misericordiam, and we are left to infer that, in
these particular cases, the Assignments were allowed to
develop into Grants free from liability.
The story is interesting for the light it throws on the
agrarian position in the vicinity of Delhi. An individual
trooper could apparently settle down _ quietly in a village,
and enjoy the revenue it yielded; and, since these individuals
obviously regarded their holdings as well worth keeping,
we must infer that the peasants accepted the arrangement
without much difficulty. The life of the village doubtless
went on as before: the only novelty was the new revenuecollector
 who came to live in it, with the authority of the
King behind him, but obviously with no great force at his
own disposal. We may guess that in some cases there may
have been friction due to the attitude of a particular assignee;
 but the duration of the Assignments indicates that,
in the thirteenth century, as in later times, the peasants
were content to acquiesce in arrangements made over their
heads, and pay the revenue to anyone who claimed it with
authority.
No similar account exists of the larger Assignments, that
is to say, those held by men of position. Their existence
is indicated, but that is all, and we do not know whether the
position involved merely liability to personal service. as
officers, as was the case in the fourteenth century, or whether
it included also the maintenance of a body of troops, as was
the rule in other Moslem countries at that time, and in
India during the Mogul period. Taking a general view of
the position, it is clear that Assignments were fairly common
in the neighbourhood of Delhi: but in this region there was