160 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA
acceptance throughout the country is fully ascertained.”
This heroic counsel was not followed, and in any case it
could not have affected the records already in existence;
but the fact that it was tendered is a sufficient dangersignal.
A student who dips into the records of the period
in search of a particular fact will probably be misled; it is
necessary to master each record as a whole, interpreting the
technical terms with one eye on the future and the other
on the past, to take into account both the individuality
of the writer, and the locality from which his experience was
drawn, to discard pre-conceived ideas as to the meaning,
and occasionally to suspend judgment for the time being.
In the account which follows, as in the earlier chapters, I
have endeavoured to minimise the risk of misconception
by selecting, as far as possible, terms which carry no misleading
connotations, and bv explaining the sense in which
I use them.
2. VILLAGE ORGANISATION
At the opening of the nineteenth century! an ordinary
village in the Ceded and Conquered Provinces might be
expected to contain, in addition to the peasants engaged
in cultivation, three classes of inhabitants, landless labourers,
village servants, and recipients of charity. The class of
landless labourers was, as it still is, widely spread, and of
great economic importance, but, being landless, these men
lie outside the scope of the present discussion, and it must
suffice to say that, so far as it is possible to judge, they were
rarely free, and scarcely ever slaves; they may perhaps be
regarded as in a state of rather mild serfdom, the incidents
of which varied within wide limits. The village servants
were remunerated by methods which bear the stamp of
antiquity. They usually had a claim on the peasants’
crops, assessed sometimes on the area sown, sometimes on
the produce gathered, sometimes on the plough, the oldest
unit recognised in the industry. Their claims were sometimes
met in cash, but more usually in produce; and, apart
from the seasonal or annual dues. many of them were
1 Except where other references are given, the facts summarised in
this section and those which follow will be found in three volumes,
the Duncan Records and Revenue Selections i and ii.
