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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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter III. The Sayyid and Afghan dynasties

Collection:: Economics Books

THE SAYYID AND AFGHAN DYNASTIES 71 constituted an act of rebellion. The method of assessment had to be decided by authority, and on this matter finality had not yet been attained. In the fourteenth century there had been two schools of opinion, one preferring to assess on the produce gathered, the other on the area sown. In the sixteenth century the terminology had changed, but the conflict between the two methods remained; and even in one small region the peasants took different views, while Farid himself was clearly open to conviction, and allowed the two methods to continue side by side. He recognised, however, that assessment on the area sown could not be carried out entirely without reference to the yield. Ghiyas- uddin Tughlaq had, as we have seen, regarded this defect as fatal to the method; Farid, concerned with a smaller area, and in a position to give personal supervision to the process, was prepared to make the necessary allowances. The only apparent novelty in his arrangements is the execu- tion of written documents. I have not read of these in the fourteenth century, but it is quite possible that they were executed then, and in earlier times; all that can be said here is that the documents now familiar, the patia given by authority, and the gabaliyat, or acknowledgment of the peasant’s liability, are at least as old as the sixteenth century, and may be much older. The position of the Chiefs remained unchanged. In the sixteenth century, as in the fourteenth, they were Intermediaries between the peasants and the central authority; and, where they existed, the assignee had to look to them, and not to the peasants, for his Income. The action taken by Farid Khan shows that an assignee could in practice exercise the full powers of the executive administration; he had not to apply to a Governor or other official to coerce his recalcitrant debtors, but coerced them himself, with forces raised at his own cost; and, in cases where he judged it desirable, he finally abolished their claims by what, in the circumstances of the time, was probably the only effective method, killing the claimants and reducing their families to slavery. The assignee in fact could exercise the powers delegated to him by the King practically as if he were King himself.

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