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

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

240 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA the sword” (Akbarnama, ii. 182). I have not traced the date of his appointment to the post, but a passage quoted below shows that the reference is to the fifth year or earlier. \ As has been explained in Appendix A, the word jama, standing by itself, is ambiguous, and may mean either Demand or Valuation. Taking the former sense, the passage could mean only that at this time the Demand on the peasants was fixed arbitrarily to meet the rising salary-bill, and that corruption supervened. The word ragami, which by itself does not mean more than “written,” would on this interpretation have a derived sense, pointing to an assessment made merely with the pen, that is to say, not based on the facts of productivity, but framed to meet requirements. The following objections apply to this interpretation :— (1) The phrase jama-i wilayat is of the type which in other passages points to Valuation, not Demand. (2) At this time, salaries were ordinarily paid by Assignment, so that the change would not meet the emergency which is indicated: arbitrarily increased assessments might bring more money into the treasury from Reserved lands, but the treasury did not pay salaries as a general rule. (3) These arbitrary assessments would supersede the methods described in paragraph A, and would render detailed assessment-rates unnecessary: we should therefore have to regard the assessment-rates from the sixth year onwards, tabulated in Ain Niizdahsila, as irrelevant to the actual assess- ments. We should have two processes going on side by side— seasonal calculation of a mass of assessment-rates not intended to be used, and arbitrary fixing of the Demand without reference to the rates. (4) The idea of assessments fixed in the lump is something of an anachronism: all the discussions of this period point to rates applied to varying crop-areas, not to sums independent of the area of production. (5) We know from the Akbarnima (ii. 333) that assessment by rates charged on the measured area, the practice described in paragraph A, was in fact still in force in the Reserved areas in the twelfth year, because its discontinuance is recorded in the thirteenth year. We should have to infer then that this period of arbitrary assess- ments intervened between two periods of Measurement, though the resumption of Measurement is nowhere stated. All these difficulties disappear if we take the phrase jama-i wildyat to denote the Valuation. On this reading, the word vagami might either carry the meaning “arbitrary,” as suggested

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