192 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA 
At this time then, Calcutta meant by zamindari what 
Delhi meant by taluqdari; and, in the precise official lan- 
guage of the North, the East India Company became by 
purchase the taluqdar of the three Towns. The merchants, 
however, continued to employ the local term, and proceeded 
to extend its use; the Member of Council who was placed in 
charge of the three Towns was designated Zamindar, and, 
in accordance with the practice of the period, the term 
“black zamindar” was applied to his Indian assistant. 
Here, I think, we find the germ of the idea which appears 
from time to time in the English records, that the word 
zamindar denoted a collector of rent, remunerated by 
salary or commission, as the case might be and that meaning 
is a very long way from the established northern use of a 
hereditary Chief with claims artecedent to Moslem rule. 
Thus the nature of the Company’s tenure cannot be 
inferred from the designations applied to it, which are 
general, and not specific. The Records show its Collector 
as granting leases (pata), subject to a maximum rate, which 
had apparently been fixed by superior authority, collecting 
rents, and managing the villages in general; and as paying an 
annual sum of about Rs. 1290 to the local revenue-collectors, 
who demanded it in the usual three instalments! sometimes 
for the King, and at others for the assignee in possession. 
So much is clear, that the Company was not liable to a 
changing annual assessment, but paid a stated sum, which 
the merchants regarded as invariable. I suspect that what 
they acquired was really an old farm (¢jdra) in the nature of 
a clearing-lease; and this may be the implication of the 
Company’s promise? that ‘ particular care shall be taken to 
1 The farmian puts the annual payment at Rs. 1195-6; but the Company 
stated the “rent” as Rs. 1281-6—9 (Early Annals, 11, i. 17), and the 
recorded payments for the years after 1717 total about Rs. 1290, the 
exact amounts varying by small sums according to the denomination of 
the rupees in which payment was made. I conjecture that the extra 
amount may have denoted some cesses added to the original sum, and 
this may be the meaning of the phrase ‘something more’ in the Com- 
pany’s petition (II, ii. 60), “‘the rent . . . according to the King’s books, 
amounts to 1194.14, and something more: which is vearly paid into 
the Treasury.” ) 
2 Early Annals, 11, ii. 60. There is a discrepancy in the translations 
of the documents of 1717. The farmdn, or general sanction, from the 
Emperor was accompanied by a batch of particular orders dealing with 
rach point separately. the 28th of which related to the grant of land.