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

148 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA said with certainty is that, by the early years of Aurangzeb’s reign, administrative pressure had increased to a point where it was tending to defeat its object, even in the Re- served areas; and we must infer that the injurious effects were greater in Assignments, because of the short and pre- carious tenure on which they were usually held. Taking Aurangzeb’s orders as they stand, it would have been possible for a provincial Diwan, endowed with the necessary capacity, tact, and integrity, to work up the revenue of his charge by degrees; it would have been obvious folly on the part of an ordinary Assignee to attempt anything of the kind, seeing that he must expect to lose the Assignment before the results of his efforts would be manifest. Whether any provincial Diwan at this period was in fact a successful revenue-administrator is doubtful, for Bernier tells us! that the Reserved areas were farmed, and in his description of the prevalent oppression he draws no distinction between officials, farmers, and assignees; all that can be said is that there was some room for successful administration in the one case. but scarcelv anv in the other. Here the story which I have been endeavouring to tell comes to its conclusion, so far as the assessment of the peasants in Northern India is concerned. I have traced no reference to any important change during the century and a half intervening between Aurangzeb’s accession and the establishment of British rule in the North; while the practice which was found in operation by the early British administrators is preciselv that which is described in formally defective, because the statistics for the opening of the reign are described as hasil, while the later figures are jama. Following previous translators, I had treated these terms as synonymous, but, as is explained in Appendix A, a distinction must be drawn between them, and the figures are not directly comparable. To re-establish the argument, it would be necessary either to find figures for the jama at Shahjahin’s accession, or to determine the precise relation between hasil and jama at that period, and my search for these data has so far proved unsuccessful. 1 Bernier, 224, 225. - He writes of assignees under the name ““timariots,” which he had presumably learned during his travels in Turkey; it denotes the holder of a tenure involving military service, and apparently in- distinguishable from the assignments of the Mogul Empire. It is not, I think, necessary to read the passage as stating that Farming was invariable in the Reserved areas. though we must conclude that it was a common practice.

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