112 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA
appropriate; but he was prohibited from coming to terms
with them for a revenue-Demand assessed on the village as a
whole, a course which was condemned as leading to
inefficiency and oppression. The headman in fact was
aseful, but he was not to be given too much authority.
What I have spoken of as the traditional policy of de-
velopment is given a prominent place. It was the collector’s
duty to secure extension of cultivation, and improvement
in cropping; the general idea was that he should offer liberal
terms to peasants to induce them to increase production,
and should hold them firmly to their engagements when
once engagements had been made. In order to secure
improved cropping, he was authorised to reduce the sanc-
tioned assessment-rates on high-grade crops; while, for
extension of cultivation, he was empowered to depart from
the regulation system of assessment by Measurement, and
agree to practically whatever the peasants wanted, to either
Sharing or Group-assessment, and to payment in either
cash or kind. It is somewhat remarkable that there is
no specific reference to sinking wells, a topic which is promi-
nent in some later documents of a similar type; provision
is made for advances of capital to needy peasants, and pre-
sumably this would cover loans for wells, but the omission
is nevertheless noteworthy.
The provision that Group-assessment, which was pro-
hibited for the village as a whole, might be sanctioned
in the special case of land newly brought under cultivation,
carries us back to one of the proposals made by Raja Todar
Mal in the 27th regnal year. Interpreted strictly, the
accepted method of assessment involved the measurement
in each season of every field under crop, and, in cases where
the fields were well defined and under continuous cultiva-
tion, this must have meant much repetition of labour, and
much harassment of busy peasants. The Raja wrote! with
reference to the progressive decline of cultivation in the
Reserved districts: “if the cultivated land is once measured,
the capacity of the peasants being increased yearly, a partial
Group-assessment should be sanctioned.” I take this to
mean that the actual size of the defined fields in regular
L Akbarnama, iii. 381.
