CONCLUSION

20%

to escape from the domination of theories and terminologies,
and to get down to the facts.

Finally, a few words may be said regarding the economic
significance of the facts which have been brought together.
The idea of agricultural development, progressing slowly but
continuously, was already present in the fourteenth century,
and probably was never entirely lost; but the political and
social environment was usually unfavourable to its fruition.
The high pitch of the revenue Demand, approximating to
the full economic rent, could be justified from Islamic texts
by anyone who might care to take the trouble, but its actual
motive was to be found in the needs of successive administrations
 and their officers; and its influence was necessarily
increased by the miscellaneous exactions, prohibited from
time to time, but recurring regularly after each prohibition.
The direct result was to take from the peasant whatever he
could be made to pay, and thus to stereotype a low standard
of living; but in addition there was the further effect of
requiring the peasant who was making money to conceal
his good fortune from everyone outside the village, and
perhaps even from his neighbours. Thus the normal position
was a contest between the administration and the peasants,
the former endeavouring to discover and appropriate what
the latter endeavoured to retain and conceal—an environment
 in which agricultural development could not be
°xpected to make much headway.
If the land had been fully occupied, such a position could
not have continued for long, because competition among
peasants would have resulted in an increase of their payments
to a point where either life ceased to be worth living, or
the administration was forced to change its attitude, as in
fact was to happen in the nineteenth century over the
Sreater part of India. Throughout the Moslem period,
however, there was ‘usually land to spare, and the risk of
losing peasants set some limit to administrative exactions.
[t is, I think, probable that the risk frequently became a
reality in one part of the country or other, and that local
depopulation occurred from time to time, though not on a
scale to attract the chroniclers’ attention + but two instances