THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 141 
some regions at the opening of the British period; either, 
then, they existed in the time of Aurangzeb, or they had 
come into existence during the eighteenth century. The 
latter alternative is improbable, because it was a period 
of disorder, during which men lived from hand to mouth, 
and were unwilling to commit themselves in advance. The 
refusal of peasants to bind themselves to pay revenue for 
even so short a term as five years is one of the most re- 
markable facts in the early British records; at that time 
popular opinion favoured annual assessment, with entire 
freedom for the future; and it is hard to see how a system 
of Contract-holding could have come into existence in such 
an environment. The probability then is that the system 
was of old standing. 
This view is strengthened by the facts, which have been 
given in Chapter I, regarding tenures in Udaipur. In that 
region, which never came under Moslem administration, 
the existence of Contract-holdings is established by extant 
documents, some of which go back for four centuries, and 
the inference seems to be almost certain that they are a 
Hindu institution, not a modern introduction. The fact 
that there is no trace of them in the earlier literature of 
Moslem India does not constitute a proof of their non- 
existence; it may equally be read as showing that Moslem 
administrators found no occasion to interfere with them. 
While then direct evidence is wanting, it is permissible to 
conjecture that Contract-holdings may in fact have per- 
sisted from the time when Moslem rule was first established 
in Delhi, not as a general institution, but in particular 
localities, or particular circumstances, in which they were 
found to be convenient; and therefore that Aurangzeb’s 
orders regarding them were required to enable the Diwan 
to dispese of difficulties which arose from time to time 
The alternative view, that the provisions in question are 
mere surplusage, introduced from an exotic system of law 
for formal purposes, is not, however, disproved by positive 
evidence; in the present state of our knowledge, the matter 
is one of probability. 
The orders indicate that the administration recognised 
the existence of certain rights to retain, and dispose of,