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 II. The 13th and 14th centuries

Collection:: Economics Books

50 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA them with instructions to extend cultivation, and improve the standard of cropping. These aims are expressed in magniloquent language: “not a span of land was to be left untilled,” and “wheat was to replace barley, sugarcane to replace wheat, vines and dates to replace sugarcane”; but in essence the underlying idea was obviously sound, and, as so often in this reign, it was the execution which broke down. The officials, nearly 100 in number, who were chosen for the purpose, were an incompetent and esurient lot. They undertook to complete the task in three years, and started out with ample funds for the grant of advances; but much of the money was embezzled, much of the waste land proved to be unfit for cultivation, of 70 odd lakhs issued by the treasury in the course of two years, ‘not one- hundredth or one-thousandth part” produced any effect, and the officials were—naturally—in fear of drastic punish- ment. Before, however, the fiasco became manifest, the King was called away to the Deccan, whither he went in the year 1345. The chronicler opined that, if he had re- turned to Delhi, not a single one of these officials would have escaped with his life; but he was not destined to return, and, under his mild successor, the advances were written offt as irrecoverable. The story speaks for itself, and only two points in it require notice. In the first place, the desolation of this tract has sometimes been attributed solely to a long series of bad seasons, but the summary I have given shows that it was essentially administrative in its origin. There was undoubtedly severe famine in parts of India at this period, and the first attempt at restoration was defeated by a failure of the rains; but the second met with no such obstacle, and in view of the later failure it is not easy to suppose that the earlier attempt would in any case have been suc- cessful. It will be recalled that in this chronicler’s language, the word “famine” usually refers primarily to the popula- tion of the city. There was clearly famine in Delhi when L Afif, 93-4. This chronicler puts the total of advances at 2 krors. Barni's figure of 70 odd lakhs is apparently for the first two years only, and the balance may have been issued later; but it is perhaps more probable that the sum had been exaggerated by tradition in the half century which intervened before Afif wrote.

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