THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 149 
Aurangzeb’s orders of 1665. Thus Holt Mackenzie, writing 
in 1819, quotes! a description of the procedure in the Delhi 
territory at a time when the native institutions had not 
been disturbed, which shows that the person in authority— 
whoever he might be— ‘“made settlements with the village 
zamindars for such a fixed annual revenue as the latter 
agreed to pay, or he took the Government share of the crops 
in kind, or he levied the established pecuniary assessment 
according to the quantity of the land cultivated and the 
species of crop grown.” Here we have Group-assessment 
in the foreground, with Sharing and Measurement behind, 
exactly as in the time of Aurangzeb; and the standard of 
the revenue also was unchanged, being ‘half of the produce 
of land fully cultivated,” while in practice as much was 
taken ‘““as the cultivator could afford to give.” Similarly 
Lord Moira, in his Minute of 1815, described the early 
British practice in the following terms: “The Collector 
considers the former assessment of the village, compares it 
with all the information he has received, and, having 
endeavoured to form an estimate of its capability, offers it 
to the proprietor at the rate of assessment he conceives it 
capable of yielding. The proprietor denies the extent of 
capability, when the Collector threatens measurement, the 
dread of an exposition of the real state from which will 
generally induce an acceptance of the offer.” Here again, 
we have Group-assessment, made on general considerations, 
as the regular practice, with the threat of Measurement in 
reserve, almost exactly as the arrangements are described 
in Aurangzeb’s farman. 
We may take it then that the method of Group-assess- 
ment, which, at some unascertained time, superseded the 
methods favoured by Sher Shah and Akbar, persisted as 
the ordinary practice in Northern India until the end of the 
Moslem period. The interest which the intervening years 
possess for us lies in the developments affecting Inter- 
mediaries, which resulted in the fusion of Assignees and 
Grantees, Chiefs, Headmen, and Farmers, into a body of 
! Rev. Sel, i. 89, go (Holt Mackenzie); 323 (Lord Moira). The words 
“village zamindir’ in the first quotation denote the peasants acting 
through their headmen.