THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 143
advance], they seize their wives and children, making them
into slaves and selling them by auction.” We must not
then read the orders as a complete code of procedure, pro-
viding for all possible emergencies; the reasonable view is
that they deal only with those matters on which a ruling
was thought to be required, and that the treatment of
defaulters was not one of these.
An interesting provision in the farman is that which relates
to the residual right of a Contract-holder who was unable
to cultivate, or had absconded (H. 3.) His right to the
holding remained in existence, and he was entitled to resume
it when in a position to do so; but, during the period of
absence or inability, the officials were empowered to let the
land on farm, and if the income so obtained exceeded the
contract-revenue, the surplus was to be paid to the holder.
This is the earliest suggestion I have found of anything
analogous to the mdalikana, or allowance to a landholder
excluded from settlement, which was an important subject
in parts of the nineteenth century.
If Contract-holdings already existed at this period, it
may be said that the orders we have been examining in-
troduced little of importance into the Indian agrarian
system. The provisions which clearly derive from the
fatwas are matters of detail; rules regarding apportionment
of the liability for revenue in case of transfers (H. 12, 13),
revenue to be levied on vines and almond trees (H. 14),
liability of Moslems to pay revenue instead of tithe (H. 14),
2xemption from assessment of land devoted to the endow-
ment of a tomb (H. 15)—such rules as these could be en-
forced without making any appreciable alteration in the
[ndian system as it had developed under previous Moslem
sovereigns, and they were doubtless useful to an adminis-
tration which may have had to decide such questions in the
course of its ordinary work. The system however in its
broad outlines remained unchanged, unless we accept the
view, which seems to me improbable, that Contract-holding
was now recognised for the first time.
