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 VII. The outlying regions

Collection:: Economics Books

194 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA Bengal zamindaris had, however, come into existence after Akbar’s reign. At first the position was definitely official, that of a revenue collector with certain stated remuneration; but the collector developed into a Farmer, paying a fixed sum, and making what he could; and then the Farmer be- came assimilated by degrees to the Chief, acquiring heredi- tary claims, and obtaining the same designation, which thus came to cover Chiefs, Farmers, and collectors alike. Ac- cording to this account, the Bengal zamindar of the eighteenth century was precisely the counterpart of the talugdar of Northern India at the same period, a person in possession, whatever his title might be. This view appears to me to be, at the least, probable; but it is not so easy to accept the account of the revenue assessments during the same period which became current in Calcutta through the labours of James Grant, and which is the starting point of most of what has recently been published on the subject! Grant’s studies were carried on, as he tells us, in Hyderabad, the capital of the State founded by Asaf Jah. Here he obtained access to records relating to Murshid Quli Khan's reorganisation of the revenue system of the Deccan, a portion of which was included in Asaf Jah’s territory. In his ‘Political Survey of the Northern Circars,” which was written in 1784. he described Murshid Quli’s methods with substantial accuracy; but he added the erroneous statement that they were a servile copy of those which had been introduced in Northern India in the time of Akbar by Raja Todar Mal. Shortly after- wards, he applied the conclusions reached in the “Political Survey” to the affairs of Bengal in his better-known “Historical and Comparative Analysis of the Finances of Bengal,” the whole argument of which is based on the view that Todar Mal made a detailed assessment on the peasants throughout Bengal on the lines which Murshid Quli followed in the Deccan. i Grant's two works were reprinted as Appendices to the Fifth Report of the Select Committee on the Affairs of the E. I. Co., 1812, the ‘‘ Survey” as Appendix 13, the ‘‘ Analysis’ as Appendix 4. Portions of them have been discussed by Archdeacon Firminger in his recent edition of the Fifth Report, and by Mr. Ascoli in the Early Revenue History of Bengal, 1917. I have examined some of Grant’s work in J.R.A.S,, Jan. 1926, p. 43; but when that paper was written, I had not fully realised the ambiguity nnderlying the term ‘‘ aggregate.’

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