THE OUTLYING REGIONS 
187 
In the course of the next half century, most of this region 
fell into the hands of the Marathas, whose agrarian policy 
is outside the scope of the present essay; but the South- 
eastern portion came under the rule of Asaf Jah, the founder 
of the modern State of Hyderabad, and, as will be ex- 
plained in the next section, this fact is of historical im- 
portance for the beginnings of the British administration in 
Bengal. 
{t remains to mention the position in the States of Gol- 
conda and Bijapur, which, though paying tribute, were 
still outside the Mogul Empire at the time of Murshid Quli’s 
reorganisation. I have found no contemporary account of 
the position in Golconda during the sixteenth century, but 
early in the seventeenth the country was wholly under the 
farming-system in its worst form, the amount payable 
being settled annually by auction! and the system was 
clearly of old standing at the time when the descriptions 
we possess were written. We have seen in an earlier 
chapter that farming was practised in this region in the 
fourteenth century, and we find it in full swing in the 
seventeenth; if there were any changes in the interval, they 
are not recorded in any of the authorities which have come 
to my notice; and the inference that farming continued 
throughout seems to me to be probable, but is not estab- 
ished by direct evidence. 
Under the annual auction-farm, the pressure on the 
peasants was necessarily at its maximum; as Methwold 
wrote, the King’s subjects were ““all his tenants, and at a 
rack tent’; and the only limit on exaction was the risk of 
driving the peasants to rebel or abscond. The share of the 
produce which they were expected to pay is not on record, 
but it can scarcely have been a factor of much practical 
importance when the farmer was concerned only to realise 
the greatest possible sum, and had no reason to think of 
the future. I have not found contemporary records of the 
! Methwold, Relations of the Kingdom of Goilckonda, in Purchas His 
Pilgrimage, 4th edition. Description of the Domains of King Kotebipa . . . 
in the Dutch collection of voyages known as Begin ende Voortgangh van 
de . . . O. I. Compagnie (ii. 77 f1.). The evidence regarding Golconda 
and Bijapur is discussed at greater length in From Akbar to Aurangzeb. 
Ch. VIII, sec. 3.