Report of the Royal Commission on National Health Insurance

The agrarian system of Moslem India

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1740277147

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-132094

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Report of the Royal Commission on National Health Insurance

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Stationery Office

Year of publication:: 1926

Scope:: XII, 394 S.

Digitisation:: 2020

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter V. The development of the health services

Collection:: Economics Books

#76 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA As regards the share of the produce which was to be taken as the basis of the assessment rates, the chronicle presents a difficulty. The translation says that one share was to be given to the cultivator and half a share to the headman, presumably as representing the State, and this would mean a claim to one-third of the produce; but this clause does not appear in any of the manuscripts I have seen, and, if it stood by itself, it might be an incorrect gloss. The point is, however, settled definitely by a chapter in the Ain,! which reproduces a schedule of Sher Shah’s assessment rates, showing the method by which they were calculated. For a few special crops, mainly vegetables, cash rates were fixed, and these are not recorded; but for all the principal staples, the “good,” “middling,” and “bad” yields per bigha were added up, one-third of the total was reckoned as the “average produce” (mahsil), and one-third of this was taken as the revenue-Demand. A single example will suffice; wheat was assumed, or calculated, to yield 18 maunds (good), 12 (middling), and 8-35 (bad); the ‘‘average produce” obtained by totalling these figures and dividing by three comes tp 12-381, but was taken as 12-38%}, and the revenue- Demand on each bigha of wheat was one-third of this, or 4 maunds, 123 sers. I have found nothing to show whether the Demand on the peasant was made in grain, or whether he was called on to pay cash at rates fixed by the adminis- tration; as has been explained in the last section, we know that collection in grain was reintroduced under the Lodi dynasty, while collection in cash was the rule in the early years of Akbar’s reign, but we do not know when the change was made. [n examining this schedule of rates, we must recognise that the units in which it is expressed are uncertain. Tt is given in the Ain as a document of merely historical interest, and, to my mind, it is highly improbable that the compiler should have taken the trouble to recalculate it in terms of Akbar’s bigha and maund, which were introduced after it had been finally discarded. We know from the Ain (i. 296) 1 Ain, i. 297 ff.: Jarrett’s rendering (ii. 62) is not quite literal. Pro- fessor Qanungo, in his monograph on Sher Shak (Calcutta, 1921), argued {p. 373) that Sher Shih claimed only a fourth share. I have examined his arguments in detail in J.R.A.S., 1926, pp. 448 ff.

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