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 VC. The seventeenth century

Collection:: Economics Books

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 129 We get somewhat nearer to the peasant in an account! written shortly before 1630, of agrarian practice in Gujarat. Anyone, we are told, “who wants to cultivate any land. goes to the headmen of the village, who are called mugaddam, and asks for as much land as he wants, at the place which suits him. This is rarely refused, but almost always granted, because here not one-tenth part of the land is cultivated, and so anyone can easily obtain his choice, and the area he needs; and he may sow as much as he can till, on condition of paying the dues to the lord.” This account brings out the fundamental difference from the present time, when the productive land is fully occupied, holdings are ordinarily permanent, and a successful peasant often has difficulty in finding room for extension; so long as there was land to spare, the peasant could pick and choose, and, while it is reasonable to suppose that the ordinary man retained certain fields as a fixed holding, it was possible for him to extend or contract his operations according to his resources and other conditions; while there was room for administrative efforts such as were prescribed in Akbar’s rules for collectors, directed towards bringing waste land into cultivation, and preventing cultivated land from falling vacant. The account also fits in with the provision made in the same rules for rewarding the headmen for their exertions in developing a village. According to this authority, an assignee in Gujarat usually received three-quarters of the produce from the peasants, so that poverty was general, and few of the peasants were possessed of any means. The figure given is probably an exaggeration, because a somewhat later writer,® who almost certainly had this report before him, wrote that one- half, or sometimes three-quarters, was paid; and, assuming that this includes cesses or miscellaneous exactions, it points to the practice of assessing at half the produce which we find well-established under Aurangzeb. ! Gujarat Report, f. 21. The expression ‘‘not one-tenth part’ should not be taken in a strict arithmetical sense; the writer of the report fre- quently used figures rhetorically, and I do not think he meant to say more than that there was plenty of land for everybody. He uses the word “lord” (heer) in several other passages to denote the assignee. * J. van Twist, Beschrijvinge van Indien. c. xli. This book was first published in 1638.

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