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

186 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA instead of Sharing; the bulk of the land would then pay one-fourth, instead of one-half, and it would be only in villages with large areas of high-grade crops that the peasants would ordinarily prefer to be assessed by Sharing. The account does not say that peasants were in fact given a choice, but, remembering that at the moment the main object was to attract peasants to desolate country, it is reasonable to infer that an option was given to them, similar to that which Akbar had authorised in order to secure extension of cultivation in the North. The differential scale of Sharing now appears in Indian records for the first time, apart from the early episode in Sind, which has been mentioned in Chapter I. As we have seen, it forms one of the main distinctions between the Islamic and Hindu agrarian systems, and the fact that its introducer was a foreigner is suggestive; it looks to me as if Murshid Quli Khidn had been familiar with differential Sharing when he was working in Persia under Ali Mardan, and had drawn on his Persian experience when he was sent to reorganise the Deccan, but there is no positive evidence on this point. How far this method was adopted in practice is a question on which I have found no information, but the account I have been following lays stress rather on the spread of the alternative method of Measurement, which is said to have become popular owing to Murshid Quli’s sagacity, and which, as we have seen, was in all ordinary cases more favourable to the peasantry. No explanation is given of the selection of one-fourth as the share of the produce to be claimed under this method, and it is permissible to take it as a proof of Murshid Quli’s practical statesmanship, that he should have discarded the dangerously high proportion which was at this time established in the North. That he attended to details as well as principles may be gathered from the recorded tradition that, in cases where the measure- ments were open to suspicion, he would hold one end of the measuring-rope himself; and, after allowing for rhetorical exaggeration, it is reasonable to infer from the statement of the authorities that his policy resulted in a progressive increase in cultivation, and consequently in revenue, in the region where it operated.

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