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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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter VII. The outlying regions

Collection:: Economics Books

THE OUTLYING REGIONS 183 guess-work. According to him, Malik Ambar abolished the practice of Sharing, and established “a fixed rent in kind,” which, later on, was replaced by “a fixed rent in money”; and various passages in the Report show that he used these terms in their natural sense, so that he could speak of ‘‘a permanent village settlement,” with a revenue independent of seasonal fluctuations. Elsewhere, however, he refers to grain-rates charged on the bigha, and he allows that the fixed money-rent existed in only 110 villages out of 290 in the region covered by his enquiries. He did not find any precise statement of the share claimed, but guessed it to be less than one-third. Malik Ambar’s final method was then either a cash Demand, fixed annually on the basis of cultivation, or a Demand fixed once for all, either in cash or in grain, and independent of changes in cultivation. In the present state of our knowledge, no decision can be made between these alternatives, though, in the circumstances of the time, the former is the more probable. The duration of his method, whatever it was, is also uncertain. He died about the year 1626, and his methods may have died with him; but in any case they could scarcely have survived the calamities of the next ten years. The Deccan was desolated by the great famine of 1630, and the fighting which preceded the final annexation of Ahmadnagar completed the dis- organisation of agriculture: it is quite certain that ‘‘fixed rents” in Robertson’s phrase could not have continued to be paid, and it is very doubtful if the machinery required for the system indicated by Grant Duff could have continued to function. All we know is that the economic and financial position of the Deccan as a whole remained unsatisfactory for some years after the Mogul annexation of Ahmadnagar. The administrative organisation of this region was altered more than once, but eventually! four Mogul provinces were con- stituted, all of which were sometimes placed under a single Viceroy. After some time, Prince Aurangzeb was appointed to this post; and, beginning about the year 1652, an entire reorganisation of the revenue-system was undertaken, ! Badshahnama, I, ii. 205, II, 710 ff.

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