THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 129 
We get somewhat nearer to the peasant in an account! 
written shortly before 1630, of agrarian practice in Gujarat. 
Anyone, we are told, “who wants to cultivate any land. 
goes to the headmen of the village, who are called mugaddam, 
and asks for as much land as he wants, at the place which 
suits him. This is rarely refused, but almost always granted, 
because here not one-tenth part of the land is cultivated, 
and so anyone can easily obtain his choice, and the area he 
needs; and he may sow as much as he can till, on condition 
of paying the dues to the lord.” This account brings out 
the fundamental difference from the present time, when the 
productive land is fully occupied, holdings are ordinarily 
permanent, and a successful peasant often has difficulty 
in finding room for extension; so long as there was land to 
spare, the peasant could pick and choose, and, while it is 
reasonable to suppose that the ordinary man retained certain 
fields as a fixed holding, it was possible for him to extend 
or contract his operations according to his resources and 
other conditions; while there was room for administrative 
efforts such as were prescribed in Akbar’s rules for collectors, 
directed towards bringing waste land into cultivation, and 
preventing cultivated land from falling vacant. The 
account also fits in with the provision made in the same 
rules for rewarding the headmen for their exertions in 
developing a village. 
According to this authority, an assignee in Gujarat 
usually received three-quarters of the produce from the 
peasants, so that poverty was general, and few of the peasants 
were possessed of any means. The figure given is probably 
an exaggeration, because a somewhat later writer,® who 
almost certainly had this report before him, wrote that one- 
half, or sometimes three-quarters, was paid; and, assuming 
that this includes cesses or miscellaneous exactions, it points 
to the practice of assessing at half the produce which we 
find well-established under Aurangzeb. 
! Gujarat Report, f. 21. The expression ‘‘not one-tenth part’ should 
not be taken in a strict arithmetical sense; the writer of the report fre- 
quently used figures rhetorically, and I do not think he meant to say 
more than that there was plenty of land for everybody. He uses the word 
“lord” (heer) in several other passages to denote the assignee. 
* J. van Twist, Beschrijvinge van Indien. c. xli. This book was first 
published in 1638.