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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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter I. Antecedents

Collection:: Economics Books

ANTECEDENTS 3 Whatever was the nature of the Peasant’s right, his immediate interest under the conditions which have been described must have centred in the answers to two questions, What share of his produce was claimed by the King? and, How the share was to be assessed and collected? On the first question the texts differ, a fact which justifies the inference that practice was not uniform, but it may be said that the rate regarded by the text-writers as appropriate was one-sixth, falling possibly as low as one-twelfth, and rising in times of emergency to one-fourth, or even one- third! On the second question the texts are practically silent, and it is permissible to draw the natural inference that these matters were regarded as lying outside the Sacred Law, and within the discretion of the individual King. Taking the texts as they stand in translation, it might indeed be contended that they contemplate the actual division of the produce, either by weighing or by measuring, but I do not think they can be interpreted as necessarily ruling out administrative expedients for simpli- fying the procedure such as we find in operation during the Moslem period. The fundamental Hindu system, as I understand it, was, then, that the Peasants paid a share of their produce to the King, who determined, within certain limits, or conceivably beyond them, the amount of the share. and also the methods t Manu (XXV. 236) has one-eighth, one-sixth, or one-twelfth of the crop, but further on (427) it is allowed that a King who in times of distress takes even the fourth part of the crops is free from guilt, if he protects his subjects to the best of his ability. Gautama (II. 227) has one-tenth, one-eighth or one-sixth. Vasishtha (XIV. 8), and Baudhayana (XIV. 199) have one-sixth. In Narada (XXXIII. 221) we read of ‘what is called the sixth of the produce of the soil,” an expression which suggests that facts may have differed from theory, and that “the sixth’ may actually have been some different fraction, just as the word tithe sometimes denotes a fraction different from one-tenth. A commentator on the Arthasastra (p. 108n) declares that the word rendered ‘one-sixth’ includes one- fourth or one-third; and .the text of that work provides (p. 291) for levying one-third or one-fourth in emergencies. The only statement of fact I have found regarding the Hindu period in the North is that, in Kanauj under Harsha, “the King’s tenants pay one-sixth of the produce as rent "’(T. Watters, On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, i. 176); but it is possible that the Chinese pilgrim reproduced his informant’s statement of the theoretical figure of the texts, rather than the actual facts of the time. As regards the south, Mr. C. H. Rao has shown (Indian Antiquary, Oct. and Nov., 1911) that the proportion of one-sixth was exceeded substantially in practice.

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