116 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA 
helpful or intolerably vexatious; and evidence is wanting 
to show which alternative is nearer the truth. We may 
safely guess that neither was universally true, that there 
were good collectors as well as bad, and that the balance 
was determined, in the last resort, by the personal qualifica- 
tions of the Emperor. We can believe then, if we choose, 
that the system worked reasonably well in the Reserved 
districts under Akbar’s rule, and yet went to pieces under 
Jahangir; but we know only that it had disappeared before 
the accession of Aurangzeb. 
Peasants in Reserved districts were, however, but a small 
proportion of the whole; and the ordinary man had to look 
to the assignee to whom circumstances entirely beyond his 
control might entrust his destinies. The literature of the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries does not of itself 
enable us to form a definite judgment regarding the conduct 
of the assignees. All that can be said is that frequent 
changes in Assignments undoubtedly made for inefficient 
and oppressive management, because they rendered any- 
thing like a constructive policy a waste of effort. A col- 
lector might work up his district, and be rewarded for doing 
so; an assignee might lose his holding before his efforts began 
to bear fruit, and in all ordinary cases would have been 
very unwise to sink capital on such precarious security. 
There is not sufficient evidence to justify a precise state- 
ment as to the length of Assignment-tenure in this reign. 
I have found no record of any formal rule on the subject, 
and, while the chronicles disclose instances of large areas 
changing hands at short intervals, the instances are too few 
to form the basis of a confident generalisation. Probably 
there were more cases than we hear of where an assignee 
retained his holding long enough for a constructive policy 
to be carried out; but the facts on record show, at any rate, 
that the duration of the tenure was absolutely uncertain, 
and, if an assignee had no assurance of retaining his holding, 
then we cannot suppose that an ordinary man would take a 
long view, or do much beyond collecting the largest possible 
Income. In general, then, there was probably better hope 
of development in a Reserved district in charge of a com- 
petent collector. It must. however, be recalled that the