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 VIII. Conclusion

Collection:: Economics Books

CONCLUSION 203 years later we find the Revenue Ministry pestered by farmers and their touts, an arrangement natural to a period of administrative collapse, on the assumption I have made that the practice of Farming was already familiar, but almost impossible to explain if Farming was previously unknown. A little later, we find the main burden of de- tailed administration passed on to assignees, who continued to carry it, with very brief intervals, up to the eighteenth century. For the dark period which separates Sher Shih from Firtiz, we have slight but significant indications that the village was the unit ordinarily dealt with by the King and his assignees. The strong administration of Sher Shah was marked by the resumption of direct relations with the peasants in a portion of the kingdom, and his example was followed for a time by Akbar; but by the middle of the seventeenth century, the village had again become the unit, a position which continued until the end of Moslem rule. The inference is, I think, permissible that, in the circumstances of the time, a system based on direct relations with individual peasants was not practicable as a per- manent general arrangement. An exceptionally strong administration might carry it out successfully over wide areas for a short time, and doubtless individual Chiefs and assignees might do the same on a smaller scale; but the administrative burden was too heavy to be borne for long. The village was there, and the line of least resistance was to bargain for its revenue, either with its headmen or with a farmer, as circumstances might permit. While, however, an element of bargaining would ordin- arily enter into assessment, the basic idea of taking some definite share of the produce certainly persisted. We know that Alauddin claimed half the produce, and it is possible that this was a somewhat larger share than had been claimed in the thirteenth century, because his object was to deprive the Chiefs and headmen of a portion of the income which they had previously enjoyed. We know, too, that some sort of reduction was made by his successor, but its amount is nowhere stated, and the next established fact is Sher Shih’s claim to one-third. It seems to me to

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