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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226 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA the sixteenth century kingdom of Bijapur, and a possible explanation of it is that the Arabic khit passed into the Deccan at the time of Alauddin’s conquest, and became naturalised there as khot. That there were khots in Gujarit also, before the Mogul conquest, appears from a document published by Professor Hodivala (Studies in Parsi History, p. 204), but their position is not explained; it is possible that the Arabic word, which quickly became obsolete in the North, survived in Gujarat, as in the Konkin, in an Indianised form, but more documentary evidence is neces- sary on this point. (3) This clause is ungrammatical as it stands. It would be easy to read awardand for aGwardan, putting a full stop at the end of clause 5. The translation would then be: ‘“ And two regulations were made in pursuance of the aforesaid object,” which makes grammar and sense. Barni’s grammar, however, is not immaculate, and the text may show what he actually wrote. (4) “The rule of Measurement and the biswa-yield,”” hukm-i masahat wa wafa-i biswa. Barni mentiones two ‘“hukms’’ or rules for assessment, Masdhat and Hasil, i.e. “measurement” and ‘produce’; he does not describe the methods, but the passage which follows will make it clear that Masahat involved allowances for crop-failure, which were not required in Hasil. Unless we take these two terms to denote methods which have become entirely forgotten, we must identify them with the two which I have called Measurement and Sharing, which, as we have seen, were equally familiar to Hindus and Moslems at this period, which reappear, though with different names, in the sixteenth century, and which persisted into the nineteenth. The word Masahat gives place to jarib or paimaish in the official records of the Mogul period, but it seems to have survived in local use, for as late as 1832 the “native measuring staff’ was known as the "“masahut establishment’ (Rev. Sel., ii. 378). Hasil can be read quite naturally as denoting the process of Sharing the produce. and, so far as I can see, it can carry no other suggestion. The phrase ‘‘ wafi-i biswda"’ does not occur except in Barni, and can be read here merely as a repetition or duplication of what precedes it, ‘‘re- liance on the unit of area,” “biswa’ denoting the smaller unit, 1/20th of the bigha. Passages in the next two chronicles, however, indicate that the word wafa had acquired the technical meaning of “yield of crops,” and this is probably the meaning here; ‘‘biswa-yield”’ would then in- dicate the standard outturn per unit of area, which was a necessary datum for the method of Measurement. The decisive passage is in T. Mubarak- shihi (Or. 5318, f. 347.), where, in a description of the oppression in the River Country under Muhammad Tughlaq, we read kisht-ha mi- paimGdand wa wafd-ha farmani mi-bastand; ‘they used to measure the fields and fix the yields by ordinance.” Here it does not seem possible to take wafiba in any other sense. The same sense is required in Afif, 180, where the word occurs twice; and taking these examples into account, it is permissible to infer that Barni also was familiar with this technical use of the word. I have not found this use in the Mogul period, and pre- sumably it became obsolete.

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