148 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA 
said with certainty is that, by the early years of Aurangzeb’s 
reign, administrative pressure had increased to a point 
where it was tending to defeat its object, even in the Re- 
served areas; and we must infer that the injurious effects 
were greater in Assignments, because of the short and pre- 
carious tenure on which they were usually held. Taking 
Aurangzeb’s orders as they stand, it would have been possible 
for a provincial Diwan, endowed with the necessary capacity, 
tact, and integrity, to work up the revenue of his charge 
by degrees; it would have been obvious folly on the part 
of an ordinary Assignee to attempt anything of the kind, 
seeing that he must expect to lose the Assignment before 
the results of his efforts would be manifest. Whether any 
provincial Diwan at this period was in fact a successful 
revenue-administrator is doubtful, for Bernier tells us! that 
the Reserved areas were farmed, and in his description of 
the prevalent oppression he draws no distinction between 
officials, farmers, and assignees; all that can be said is 
that there was some room for successful administration in 
the one case. but scarcelv anv in the other. 
Here the story which I have been endeavouring to tell 
comes to its conclusion, so far as the assessment of the 
peasants in Northern India is concerned. I have traced no 
reference to any important change during the century 
and a half intervening between Aurangzeb’s accession and 
the establishment of British rule in the North; while the 
practice which was found in operation by the early British 
administrators is preciselv that which is described in 
formally defective, because the statistics for the opening of the reign are 
described as hasil, while the later figures are jama. Following previous 
translators, I had treated these terms as synonymous, but, as is explained 
in Appendix A, a distinction must be drawn between them, and the figures 
are not directly comparable. To re-establish the argument, it would be 
necessary either to find figures for the jama at Shahjahin’s accession, or 
to determine the precise relation between hasil and jama at that period, 
and my search for these data has so far proved unsuccessful. 
1 Bernier, 224, 225. - He writes of assignees under the name ““timariots,” 
which he had presumably learned during his travels in Turkey; it denotes 
the holder of a tenure involving military service, and apparently in- 
distinguishable from the assignments of the Mogul Empire. It is not, I 
think, necessary to read the passage as stating that Farming was invariable 
in the Reserved areas. though we must conclude that it was a common 
practice.