192 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA
At this time then, Calcutta meant by zamindari what
Delhi meant by taluqdari; and, in the precise official lan-
guage of the North, the East India Company became by
purchase the taluqdar of the three Towns. The merchants,
however, continued to employ the local term, and proceeded
to extend its use; the Member of Council who was placed in
charge of the three Towns was designated Zamindar, and,
in accordance with the practice of the period, the term
“black zamindar” was applied to his Indian assistant.
Here, I think, we find the germ of the idea which appears
from time to time in the English records, that the word
zamindar denoted a collector of rent, remunerated by
salary or commission, as the case might be and that meaning
is a very long way from the established northern use of a
hereditary Chief with claims artecedent to Moslem rule.
Thus the nature of the Company’s tenure cannot be
inferred from the designations applied to it, which are
general, and not specific. The Records show its Collector
as granting leases (pata), subject to a maximum rate, which
had apparently been fixed by superior authority, collecting
rents, and managing the villages in general; and as paying an
annual sum of about Rs. 1290 to the local revenue-collectors,
who demanded it in the usual three instalments! sometimes
for the King, and at others for the assignee in possession.
So much is clear, that the Company was not liable to a
changing annual assessment, but paid a stated sum, which
the merchants regarded as invariable. I suspect that what
they acquired was really an old farm (¢jdra) in the nature of
a clearing-lease; and this may be the implication of the
Company’s promise? that ‘ particular care shall be taken to
1 The farmian puts the annual payment at Rs. 1195-6; but the Company
stated the “rent” as Rs. 1281-6—9 (Early Annals, 11, i. 17), and the
recorded payments for the years after 1717 total about Rs. 1290, the
exact amounts varying by small sums according to the denomination of
the rupees in which payment was made. I conjecture that the extra
amount may have denoted some cesses added to the original sum, and
this may be the meaning of the phrase ‘something more’ in the Com-
pany’s petition (II, ii. 60), “‘the rent . . . according to the King’s books,
amounts to 1194.14, and something more: which is vearly paid into
the Treasury.” )
2 Early Annals, 11, ii. 60. There is a discrepancy in the translations
of the documents of 1717. The farmdn, or general sanction, from the
Emperor was accompanied by a batch of particular orders dealing with
rach point separately. the 28th of which related to the grant of land.
