The agrarian system of Moslem India

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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

THE REIGN OF AKBAR (1556-1605) 115 question naturally arises whether their performance was possible in practice. We do not know the size of a collector’s charge at this period; but, assuming that the standard of a kror of dams fixed in the 1gth year had not been altered materially, and taking the Demand on a bigha as ranging round 40 dams, the figure indicated by the assessment- rates, a circle would contain somewhere about 250,000 bighas of cropped land, and the duties imposed by the rules could not possibly have been carried out by the officials in person. We must regard them rather as the heads of staffs employed by themselves and on their responsibility; we know! in fact that collectors had agents (gumdshta), and we may assume that in the same way the clerk had a staff of writers, one of whom would accompany each measuring-party in the field. That there might be several parties at work simultaneously in each circle is plain from Todar Mal’s proposal (Akbarnama, iii. 382), that the number employed should be adjusted to the area to be measured, and that the collector should station himself at a central place whence he could visit them all. It is, I think, possible to obtain a general view of this system as it must have presented itself to an ordinary peasant. He knew beforehand the extent of his liability to the State, and could plan his season’s cropping with a knowledge of the amount of cash he would have to find; but he was necessarily ignorant of the prices at which he would be able to sell his produce. So far as the revenue- Demand was concerned, he was not exposed to the tyranny of a village oligarchy, but, on the other hand, he would have to reckon with the exactions of the measurement- party and the subordinates employed in collection. He might be harassed further by an energetic collector intent on the extension of cultivation and the improvement of cropping, without due regard to the possibilities of the locality; or he might find himself placed in relations with a prudent and sagacious officer who would assist him to make the most of his resources. Thus the effects of the system must have depended wholly on the manner of its adminis- tration: according to circumstances, it might be either | See, e.g., Akbarnama, iii. 457, where the gumashtas’ misconduct is noticea .

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