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 VI. The last phase in Northern India

Collection:: Economics Books

THE LAST PHASE IN NORTHERN INDIA 167 were then recent re-settlements, where the person entitled to collect revenue had induced peasants to settle in a deserted village. The inducements which were offered frequently included the promise that they would be allowed to remain there, and accordingly these peasants are shown in the earliest records as having a right otf occupancy. 1 suspect that, in cases where the settlers belonged to a single caste, they may have been on the way to form a new Brotherhood when the process was arrested by the ideas introduced by British administrators; but I have not found a clear case of a Brotherhood actually originating in this way, and at any rate the administrators failed to discover a Brotherhood in these cases. The other group ~onsists of villages which paid revenue to hereditary Chiefs, or to individuals who, in the disorganisation of the time, were establishing new chief-ships for themselves. There were Brotherhoods in some Chiefs’ villages, but in others there were merely unorganised peasants, who paid their {ues to a manager! appointed by the Chief, either one of themselves or a stranger. The foregoing analysis? will show that the agrarian system at this period was by no means uniform. As I have said in the previous section, it is impossible to state quan- titatively the area occupied under each of these classes, but there is no doubt that in the region now under ex- amination the bulk of the villages were cultivated by mixed bodies of peasants, each of them being managed bv a i Such managers appear in the Records under the name mugaddam, which also denoted the Headmen chosen by members of a Brotherhood. The similarity between the two kinds of managers is obvious if one looks on a village from outside, because their functions appear practically identical: inside the village, there is an obvious distinction between the Headman representing the Brotherhood and the manager imposed on the village from above. t In the text I have endeavoured to concentrate on the main lines of rural organisation, and have passed over various exceptions and anomalies. [wo of these, however, may be mentioned, because of their historical interest. (a) In some cases a village contained two Brotherhoods of jifferent castes. This arrangement seems to have been unstable: either one Brotherhood eventually ousted the other, or the village was divided into two on the basis of existing occupation. Such partitions furnish an explanation of what are now known as khetbat villages, where a single map shows the lands of two mauzas with the fields intermingled. (b) In some cases a Brotherhood was spread over a much larger area than a village, having presumably been allowed to occupy a compact area, or else having gradually absorbed other villages adjoining the original foundation.

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