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

THE 13tu AND 14tH CENTURIES 51 it was repopulated, because the country on which it depended for supplies was unproductive; but the failure to produce arose, not merely from the want of rain, but from the dispersal of the peasants, and that dispersal must be at- tributed solely to a series of administrative blunders. The other point in the story is that we now meet for the first time with the idea that improvement in cropping should be one of the objects of administrative action. In the declarations of agricultural policy which have already been examined, stress is laid solely on maintenance and extension of cultivation: Muhammad Tughlaq may not have been the first to insist on the alternative line of action, but the earliest record of its official adoption comes in his reign. Its expression is, as I have said, magniloquent, and the picture of Meerut or Bulandshahr as a country of vines and date-palms is calculated to evoke a smile, or even a sneer: but the idea itself was sound, and from this time forward it is a recognised element in agrarian policy. The position in regard to Assignments in this reign is not recorded by the Indian chronicler, but some idea of it can be obtained from a book which was written in Damascus,® and which mentions Muhammad Tughlaq as the reigning sovereign in India. The military organisation in Delhi differed, we are told, from that of Egypt or Syria, in that a commandant was not required to maintain troops out of his own resources; the troops were paid from the treasury, while the commandants’ income was personal. Their personal income was given to them in the form of Assign- ments of revenue, which ordinarily yielded much more than the estimated value; and some of the higher officials at headquarters also had ‘towns and villages” for their salary, or for part of it. This account fits in with what has been said above regarding some previous ‘reigns. The Assignment of this period differed from that of the Mogul t In the Cambridge History (iii. 161) this passage is taken as ordering a change in rotation of crops; but I read it as meaning exactly what it says, that inferior crops were to be replaced by superior. 2 The Masalig-ul Absar of Shahabuddin. I have not seen the text oft this work, and quote from the extracts given in Elliot, iii. 573 ff. I con: jecture that “towns” in the phrase '‘towns and villages,’’ may represent “gasbat,” in which case ‘‘parganas'’ would be the probable meaning.

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