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 I. Antecedents

Collection:: Economics Books

4 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA land: the Law looks to the duty of production, and not to the right of occupation. Modern writers appear inclined to take sides, sometimes rather forcibly, on the question whether the land was owned by the King or by the Peasant; but I have not yet found any scientific discussion of what seems to me to be the antecedent question, whether the conception of ownership of agricultural land had been reached at the time when the Sacred Law was formulated. There is no doubt that individuals or families could hold heritable and transferable rights in particular parcels of land, because the texts deal with inheritance, and with transfer by gift, sale, or mortgage: the question is whether the rights which were inherited or transferred amounted to swnership in the ordinary sense of the word, or whether they were merely rights to occupy subject to the King’s pleasure! To put the matter in another way, the point on which I have found nothing definite is whether the process of disentangling the conception of private right from political allegiance had progressed so far as to justify the application of the word ‘‘ ownership” to any of the agrarian institutions existing during the Hindu period. I can raise these questions, but it is not my business to answer them. If the rights in question amounted only to occupancy during the King’s pleasure, there is complete continuity between the Hindu period and the Moslem: if ownership, in the modern sense, existed during the former, it will be necessary to explain how it was obliterated from the outset of the latter. Moslem despots could of course have annulled the institution of ownership while preserving other features of the Hindu agrarian system, but whether they could have obliterated the conception is a different matter. 1 The texts discuss these private rights as between individuals, but say very little as to their precise nature, or their relation to the Sovereign. A few passages, however, indicate the existence of an over-riding authority, notably one in Brihaspati (XXXIII, 353), where the King’s action in taking land from one man and giving it to another is placed on the same footing of inevitability as the diluvial action of a river. In the Arthasastra again (p. 50), there is a definite recommendation to eject peasants for laziness or inefficiency. I am not arguing that such passages are conclusive, but merely that they require to be taken into account when the question of ownership is discussed. Reference may also be made to a couplet quoted by a commentator on the Arthasastra (p. 140) to the effect that land and water were not objects of private ownership.

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