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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APPENDIX C 22¢ Notes. (1) “Hindu.” As explained in Chapter II, Barni uses this word in 2 narrow sense, to denote the classes above the ordinary peasants, so that in fact it is almost a synonym for Chiefs and headmen in this context. (2) “From Chief to sweeper.” Az khiita wa baldhar. Balihar is not a Persian word, and it is quite safe to follow Blochmann in identifying it with the common Hindi name for a low-caste menial, employed in the village as a general drudge. In the Upper Doib, which was Barnl's country, the balihar is almost always a sweeper by caste,! and, since the word is obviously used to denote the lowest rank of the rural population, the rendering “sweeper probably gives what was in the writer's mind; there is no actual English equivalent. The word transliterated provisionally as khiita has not been found elsewhere in the literature, and has to be interpreted from the parallel passages, which are fairly numerous in Barni. It appears indifferently as khiit and kniita, and these cannot be distinguished. The antithesis to balahar indicates that the khiit must be looked for among the rural aristocracy, and all the passages confirm this. Khit is commonly coupled with the headman or muqaddam (e.g. 288, 291, 324, 430, 479, 554), while in two passages (288) he is linked with the chaudhrl, or pargana headman, as well as with the muqaddam; and his perquisites were on the same footing (430) as those of the muqaddam. Barnf does not use the word zamindar for a Chief (subject to the King) until nearly the end of his book (539, 589), and it never appears in his discussions of agrarian policy; we find khiit wherever we should expect to find zamindar, and the only reasonable interpretation is that the latter word was coming into use during his lifetime, and gradually superseding hit, so that the two are in fact Synonymous. If we read zamindir in every passage where khiit occurs, we get perfectly good sense; if they are not synonyms, then we must hold that the important class of khits, as known to Barni, had become absolutely extinct when the next chronicler wrote, and that the equally important class of zamndars had mysteriously come into existence, a hypothesis as unreasonable as unnecessary. The identity of the word khiit is doubtful. Blochmann took it as the rare Arabic word. rendered by Steingass as “a limber twig; a corpulent man, yet handsome and active,” but did not indicate how such a word could come to denote a Chief. The MSS, I have seen do not show the vowels, and it is possible that the pronunciation was different, and that we are dealing with a word formed independently in India; but, whatever be the origin of the word, its meaning in Barni is clearly that of Chief. Slochmann arrived by analysis at the correct result, that the phrase in- dicates the extremes of rural society, but the rendering “landowners and tenants” which he endorsed involves both a logical non-sequitur and an aistorical anachronism. The suggestion has been made that the word under discussion is really [ndian in origin, being identical with the Marathi word khof, which is tamiliar in the Konkan; but the fact that Barni wrote the word with two Arabic letters (kh and t) makes its derivation from any sanskritic language highly improbable. The word khot has not been traced further back than ! For the balihar’s position, see Rev. Sel., ii. 97.

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