186 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA 
instead of Sharing; the bulk of the land would then pay 
one-fourth, instead of one-half, and it would be only in 
villages with large areas of high-grade crops that the 
peasants would ordinarily prefer to be assessed by Sharing. 
The account does not say that peasants were in fact given 
a choice, but, remembering that at the moment the main 
object was to attract peasants to desolate country, it is 
reasonable to infer that an option was given to them, similar 
to that which Akbar had authorised in order to secure 
extension of cultivation in the North. 
The differential scale of Sharing now appears in Indian 
records for the first time, apart from the early episode in 
Sind, which has been mentioned in Chapter I. As we have 
seen, it forms one of the main distinctions between the 
Islamic and Hindu agrarian systems, and the fact that its 
introducer was a foreigner is suggestive; it looks to me as if 
Murshid Quli Khidn had been familiar with differential 
Sharing when he was working in Persia under Ali Mardan, and 
had drawn on his Persian experience when he was sent to 
reorganise the Deccan, but there is no positive evidence on 
this point. How far this method was adopted in practice 
is a question on which I have found no information, but the 
account I have been following lays stress rather on the 
spread of the alternative method of Measurement, which is 
said to have become popular owing to Murshid Quli’s sagacity, 
and which, as we have seen, was in all ordinary cases more 
favourable to the peasantry. No explanation is given of 
the selection of one-fourth as the share of the produce to be 
claimed under this method, and it is permissible to take it 
as a proof of Murshid Quli’s practical statesmanship, that 
he should have discarded the dangerously high proportion 
which was at this time established in the North. That he 
attended to details as well as principles may be gathered 
from the recorded tradition that, in cases where the measure- 
ments were open to suspicion, he would hold one end of the 
measuring-rope himself; and, after allowing for rhetorical 
exaggeration, it is reasonable to infer from the statement of 
the authorities that his policy resulted in a progressive 
increase in cultivation, and consequently in revenue, in the 
region where it operated.