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

18 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA Arabic or Persian names to the institutions which they found in existence; and even this process was not carried out consistently, for in some cases the Indian names were adopted at once, while in others they eventually ousted the imported designations. Some details of this development must be given, because the fluctuating terminology is one of the chief difficulties in understanding the early chronicles. To take tho most important person first, there was at the outset no established term for the individual peasant, but peasants in the mass were regularly denoted by the Arabic word ra‘7yat, now naturalised in English as ryot. This word meant a herd of whatever animals furnished sub- sistence, and consequently deserved protection,—camels in the desert, cattle in grazing-country, peasants on arable land: its transfer in Indian use from the herd to the indi- vidual did not occur, so far as I can find, until the eighteenth century at the earliest; and throughout the Moslem period it must ordinarily be read as a noun of multitude, the plural forms being interpreted as “herds” rather than “peasants.” As regards the Chief, usage seems to have developed gradually. Writing in the middle of the thirteenth century, Minhaj-ul Sirdj! used only specific Indian terms such as Rai or Rana: a century later, Ziya Barni? denoted the Chief usually by &Adt, a word which I have found nowhere else in the northern literature, and employed zamindar in only a few passages; but Shams Afif, the next chronicler, used zaminddr frequently, and thenceforward it is the regular designation. For the village, we find the Persian word dekh from the outset, supplemented later on by the Arabic mauza; but the aggregate of villages known in Hindi as pargana was given different names. The earliest writers generally used the Arabic gasba (not yet specialised in the modern Indian sense of ‘“town”), but the Hindi designation? appears in !'T. Nasiri: Rai occurs as early as p. 9, and frequently thereafter, as does Rana. ‘ Barni uses kk#l in too many passages for citation: zamindar appears on p. 326 referring to Chiefs outside the kingdom, and on p. 539 it denotes for the first time Chiefs subject to the King of Delhi. The word khit is discussed in Appendix C. 3 Afif: the first use is on p. 99.

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