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 177 to the small charitable tenures, which I guess to be an institution of old standing; but the area falling under these heads is proportionately so small that they call for mention rather than detailed discussion. The real problem is the silence of the chronicles regarding the organisation of the peasants within the village. As to this problem, it is well to recall that the evidence available is very unequally distributed over the Moslem period. We have a comparatively large amount of detail regarding the efforts of a few outstanding administrators to deal directly with the individual peasants; but these are episodes only, when measured by years, and our sources are very imperfect for the much longer intervals when, in the absence of an Alauddin or a Sher Shah, we must assume that the revenue administration worked on lines too un- sensational to attract a chronicler’s attention. It is un- likely that we should hear much of a village organisation during the episodes of activity when the administration was trying to get behind that organisation to the individuals who composed it, while in the remainder of the period there was nothing for a chronicler to tell. The scanty indications of the existence of a regular organisation group themselves round the mugaddam, that is, the Headman, and the Accountant. We have seen that, at the end of the Moslem period, villages dealt with the authorities only through mugaddams, and the early English records show that the prominence of these men tended to obscure the position occupied by the other peasants, so that, just at first, some mugaddams looked like the land- owners for whom the English administrators were seeking. [t is safe to identify these prominent men with the mugad- dams mentioned in Aurangzeb’s farmdn to Rashik Das, where they appear as potential oppressors of the peasants. We may again identify the mugaddams of Aurangzeb’s time with those who appear in Akbar’s detailed instructions as taking part in the seasonal assessments; and also with the kaldntarin-i deh, whom the Emperor regarded as potential oppressors of the peasantry! Viewed from above, then, + Aim, i. 286. Jarrett’s translation of the passage (ii. 45) is not exact. The compiler of this portion of the Ain used various words to denote the prominent men in a village—mugaddam, kalantaran-i deh. rais-i deh, etc.;

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