4 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA 
land: the Law looks to the duty of production, and not to 
the right of occupation. Modern writers appear inclined 
to take sides, sometimes rather forcibly, on the question 
whether the land was owned by the King or by the Peasant; 
but I have not yet found any scientific discussion of what 
seems to me to be the antecedent question, whether the 
conception of ownership of agricultural land had been 
reached at the time when the Sacred Law was formulated. 
There is no doubt that individuals or families could hold 
heritable and transferable rights in particular parcels of 
land, because the texts deal with inheritance, and with 
transfer by gift, sale, or mortgage: the question is whether 
the rights which were inherited or transferred amounted to 
swnership in the ordinary sense of the word, or whether 
they were merely rights to occupy subject to the King’s 
pleasure! To put the matter in another way, the point on 
which I have found nothing definite is whether the process 
of disentangling the conception of private right from 
political allegiance had progressed so far as to justify the 
application of the word ‘‘ ownership” to any of the agrarian 
institutions existing during the Hindu period. I can raise 
these questions, but it is not my business to answer them. 
If the rights in question amounted only to occupancy during 
the King’s pleasure, there is complete continuity between 
the Hindu period and the Moslem: if ownership, in the 
modern sense, existed during the former, it will be necessary 
to explain how it was obliterated from the outset of the latter. 
Moslem despots could of course have annulled the institution 
of ownership while preserving other features of the Hindu 
agrarian system, but whether they could have obliterated 
the conception is a different matter. 
1 The texts discuss these private rights as between individuals, but say 
very little as to their precise nature, or their relation to the Sovereign. 
A few passages, however, indicate the existence of an over-riding authority, 
notably one in Brihaspati (XXXIII, 353), where the King’s action in 
taking land from one man and giving it to another is placed on the same 
footing of inevitability as the diluvial action of a river. In the Arthasastra 
again (p. 50), there is a definite recommendation to eject peasants for 
laziness or inefficiency. I am not arguing that such passages are conclusive, 
but merely that they require to be taken into account when the question 
of ownership is discussed. Reference may also be made to a couplet quoted 
by a commentator on the Arthasastra (p. 140) to the effect that land and 
water were not objects of private ownership.