THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 137 
to the Treasurer (R. 8) make it clear that cash-payments 
by peasants were usual; and the absence of any provisions 
for the disposal of revenue received in kind suggests that 
this practice was not general, though it appears to have 
existed in localities where currency was normally scarce. 
Payment in cash is indicated also by the language of the 
preamble, which refers to low prices as a calamity on the 
same footing as drought or frost. In the practice of Group- 
assessment, the Demand was fixed for the year, not, as in 
the alternative methods, for each season; and it was realised 
by three instalments (R. 4), fixed apparently with regard to 
the circumstances of each pargana. 
In ordinary seasons then the position of the village was 
clear. The Demand was assessed at the beginning of the 
year in a lump sum, which was distributed over the peasants 
by the headmen ; the peasants paid the headmen as the crops 
matured, and the latter satisfied the demands of the col- 
lector. The arrangements might however be upset by the 
occurrence of a calamity, ‘drought, frost, low prices, or 
other”; for Group-assessment, aiming at a Demand ap- 
proximating to half the produce, was open to the same 
objection as Measurement, that even a moderate loss of 
produce might render the realisation of the assessment 
impossible. In such an event the revenue staff was required 
(R. 9) to be active and vigilant, to revise the assessment 
in accordance with the actual produce, and to take special 
care that the apportionment among the peasants was not 
left in the hands of the headmen, accountants, or dominant 
cliques.2 The second farman adds the detail (H. g) that 
| Professor Sarkar has shown (Studies in Mughal India, p. 217) that 
in parts of Orissa revenue was paid in kind during Aurangzeb’s reign, 
out this was one of the tracts where currency was normally scarce, and 
sannot be taken as typical of Northern India. 
* There is some difficulty in interpreting the phrase ‘ sarbasta calamity" 
mn R. 9. The context shows only that it refers to a calamity in which the 
distribution (fafrig) depended on the headmen and accountants, and that 
this practice was not to be permitted. The only illustrative passages I 
have found are Khwafi, i. 733, and Maasirulumra, iii. 498, which are one 
authority, not two. In them fashkhis-i sarbasta is used to describe the 
method of assessing revenue by a charge on each peasant. Here the 
word clearly means ‘‘per head,” or nearly its etymological meaning; 
and the same sense seems to fit the passage under -consideration. A 
‘sarbasta calamity’ would be one in which the village authorities sent 
1p a list showing the loss of each peasant separately; and the possibilities 
of frand in a proceeding of that kind are sufficiently obvious to explain the 
prohibition.