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 137 to the Treasurer (R. 8) make it clear that cash-payments by peasants were usual; and the absence of any provisions for the disposal of revenue received in kind suggests that this practice was not general, though it appears to have existed in localities where currency was normally scarce. Payment in cash is indicated also by the language of the preamble, which refers to low prices as a calamity on the same footing as drought or frost. In the practice of Group- assessment, the Demand was fixed for the year, not, as in the alternative methods, for each season; and it was realised by three instalments (R. 4), fixed apparently with regard to the circumstances of each pargana. In ordinary seasons then the position of the village was clear. The Demand was assessed at the beginning of the year in a lump sum, which was distributed over the peasants by the headmen ; the peasants paid the headmen as the crops matured, and the latter satisfied the demands of the col- lector. The arrangements might however be upset by the occurrence of a calamity, ‘drought, frost, low prices, or other”; for Group-assessment, aiming at a Demand ap- proximating to half the produce, was open to the same objection as Measurement, that even a moderate loss of produce might render the realisation of the assessment impossible. In such an event the revenue staff was required (R. 9) to be active and vigilant, to revise the assessment in accordance with the actual produce, and to take special care that the apportionment among the peasants was not left in the hands of the headmen, accountants, or dominant cliques.2 The second farman adds the detail (H. g) that | Professor Sarkar has shown (Studies in Mughal India, p. 217) that in parts of Orissa revenue was paid in kind during Aurangzeb’s reign, out this was one of the tracts where currency was normally scarce, and sannot be taken as typical of Northern India. * There is some difficulty in interpreting the phrase ‘ sarbasta calamity" mn R. 9. The context shows only that it refers to a calamity in which the distribution (fafrig) depended on the headmen and accountants, and that this practice was not to be permitted. The only illustrative passages I have found are Khwafi, i. 733, and Maasirulumra, iii. 498, which are one authority, not two. In them fashkhis-i sarbasta is used to describe the method of assessing revenue by a charge on each peasant. Here the word clearly means ‘‘per head,” or nearly its etymological meaning; and the same sense seems to fit the passage under -consideration. A ‘sarbasta calamity’ would be one in which the village authorities sent 1p a list showing the loss of each peasant separately; and the possibilities of frand in a proceeding of that kind are sufficiently obvious to explain the prohibition.

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