The agrarian system of Moslem India

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1804119261

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-188010

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Moreland, William Harrison http://d-nb.info/gnd/172263670

Title:: The agrarian system of Moslem India

Edition:: 2. ed. Reissue (d. Ausg. Cambridge) 1929; [Reprint]

Place of publication:: Delhi

Publisher:: Oriental Books, Munshiram Manoharlal

Year of publication:: 1968

Scope:: XVII, 296 S.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter III. The Sayyid and Afghan dynasties

Collection:: Economics Books

106 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA would lead naturally to the sale of wives and children, which was a recognised process for realising arrears; and, speaking generally, Badaiini’s account is confirmed in essentials by the official record. Turning to his description of Todar Mal’s severity, it is to my mind impossible to read the appointment of the Imperial Commissioner in any other sense than as showing that Akbar thought the Raja had gone too far. Todar Mal’s proceedings, as described by Badaiini, were obviously a revival of the old, ferocious, process of audit called muhdsaba, which we have seen in operation in the fourteenth century. The process was not yet obsolete, for the same writer tells us (ii. 280) that in Bengal Muzaffar Khin “practised muhdsaba according to the ancient custom’: and it is perhaps significant that some of the cases which the Commissioner was appointed to settle dated from the time when that officer was working in the Revenue Ministry. These proceedings had clearly been dragging on for years, collectors being brought to account with repeated floggings and tortures in the old style, till Akbar decided to bring the matter to a close. This view is entirely borne out by the nature of the Com- missioner’s proposals. The document is exceedingly ob- scure, dealing, as it does, with minute details of the relations between the Ministry and the local staff; but its general purport 1s correctly represented in the statement that it was designed to make the position of a collector tolerable. We may infer from its terms that, in the practice of the period, each individual collector was held personally re- sponsible for the revenue assessed on his charge; but that the “check on receipts,” to use the modern administrative phrase, was occasional rather than continuous. That is to say, a collector was left for some time with an open account, which was audited, at the Ministry and not locally, on the occasion of his removal or transfer, or else when he was called to headquarters for the purpose; he had then to satisfy the auditors that he had collected and paid to the treasury all that was due, or, failing that, to make good the sum for which he could not account satisfactorily. Reading the Commissioner’s report in the light of this

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