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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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter VC. The seventeenth century

Collection:: Economics Books

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 141 some regions at the opening of the British period; either, then, they existed in the time of Aurangzeb, or they had come into existence during the eighteenth century. The latter alternative is improbable, because it was a period of disorder, during which men lived from hand to mouth, and were unwilling to commit themselves in advance. The refusal of peasants to bind themselves to pay revenue for even so short a term as five years is one of the most re- markable facts in the early British records; at that time popular opinion favoured annual assessment, with entire freedom for the future; and it is hard to see how a system of Contract-holding could have come into existence in such an environment. The probability then is that the system was of old standing. This view is strengthened by the facts, which have been given in Chapter I, regarding tenures in Udaipur. In that region, which never came under Moslem administration, the existence of Contract-holdings is established by extant documents, some of which go back for four centuries, and the inference seems to be almost certain that they are a Hindu institution, not a modern introduction. The fact that there is no trace of them in the earlier literature of Moslem India does not constitute a proof of their non- existence; it may equally be read as showing that Moslem administrators found no occasion to interfere with them. While then direct evidence is wanting, it is permissible to conjecture that Contract-holdings may in fact have per- sisted from the time when Moslem rule was first established in Delhi, not as a general institution, but in particular localities, or particular circumstances, in which they were found to be convenient; and therefore that Aurangzeb’s orders regarding them were required to enable the Diwan to dispese of difficulties which arose from time to time The alternative view, that the provisions in question are mere surplusage, introduced from an exotic system of law for formal purposes, is not, however, disproved by positive evidence; in the present state of our knowledge, the matter is one of probability. The orders indicate that the administration recognised the existence of certain rights to retain, and dispose of,

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