CONCLUSION 
203 
years later we find the Revenue Ministry pestered by 
farmers and their touts, an arrangement natural to a 
period of administrative collapse, on the assumption I 
have made that the practice of Farming was already familiar, 
but almost impossible to explain if Farming was previously 
unknown. A little later, we find the main burden of de- 
tailed administration passed on to assignees, who continued 
to carry it, with very brief intervals, up to the eighteenth 
century. 
For the dark period which separates Sher Shih from 
Firtiz, we have slight but significant indications that the 
village was the unit ordinarily dealt with by the King and 
his assignees. The strong administration of Sher Shah 
was marked by the resumption of direct relations with the 
peasants in a portion of the kingdom, and his example 
was followed for a time by Akbar; but by the middle of the 
seventeenth century, the village had again become the 
unit, a position which continued until the end of Moslem 
rule. The inference is, I think, permissible that, in the 
circumstances of the time, a system based on direct relations 
with individual peasants was not practicable as a per- 
manent general arrangement. An exceptionally strong 
administration might carry it out successfully over wide 
areas for a short time, and doubtless individual Chiefs and 
assignees might do the same on a smaller scale; but the 
administrative burden was too heavy to be borne for long. 
The village was there, and the line of least resistance was 
to bargain for its revenue, either with its headmen or with 
a farmer, as circumstances might permit. 
While, however, an element of bargaining would ordin- 
arily enter into assessment, the basic idea of taking some 
definite share of the produce certainly persisted. We 
know that Alauddin claimed half the produce, and it is 
possible that this was a somewhat larger share than had 
been claimed in the thirteenth century, because his object 
was to deprive the Chiefs and headmen of a portion of the 
income which they had previously enjoyed. We know, 
too, that some sort of reduction was made by his successor, 
but its amount is nowhere stated, and the next established 
fact is Sher Shih’s claim to one-third. It seems to me to