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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Introduction. THIS book may be described as an essay in institutional history. During the main period of Moslem rule in India, lasting from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century, a kingdom had three essential constituents, the Sovereign who ruled it, the Army which supported the throne, and the Peasantry which paid for both; and the relation sub- sisting between these entities was aptly presented in an aphorism current in the early days, that “troops and peasants are the two arms of the kingdom.” The dynastic and military history of the period is now tolerably accessible to students, but it is impossible to obtain from the existing literature a general or connected view of the position of the peasants in their relations with the State, and it is this gap which I now attempt to fill. The contents of my essay will possibly come as something of a surprise to readers who are interested primarily in the agrarian questions of the present day, and who may expect to find it occupied mainly by discussions of the rights enjoyed or claimed by landholders and their tenants. The prominence of questions of right is, however, a recent development in Indian agrarian history, and belongs almost entirely to the British period: in Moslem India, as in the India of the Hindus, the agrarian system was a matter of duties rather than rights. At its root lay the conception that it was the duty of the peasants to till the soil, and pay a share of their produce to the State; so far as private rights or claims were recognised, they were subordinate to this fundamental obligation. The main subject-matter of my essay is consequently an examination of the methods by which the State’s share of the peasant’s produce was assessed and collected, and of the arrangements under which portions of it were alienated in favour of the classes whom I describe collectively as Intermediaries. It is not part of my present purpose to trace in detail the transition from the Moslem system to that which now

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