2 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA 
from unrecorded changes in the relation between words 
and things; and in ranging over the available literature of 
the centuries which intervened between Asoka and the 
Moslem conquest, one is constantly assailed by the doubt 
whether similar changes may not have crept in to obscure 
the interpretation of the record. My statement of the 
elements of the Hindu system is thus necessarily tentative: 
in any case it is required in order to explain the 
terminology which I have adopted; and it may perhaps 
be of some service in directing the attention of specialists 
to aspects of the literature which have hitherto received 
‘nadequate examination. 
For the durable or fundamental features of the Hindu 
agrarian system we must turn to the Dharma, or Sacred 
Law, the provisions of which could be refined or developed 
by successive writers, but not formally altered by legislative 
or executive action. The Sacred Law contemplates an 
agrarian position similar in essentials to that which we find 
at the opening of the Moslem period, and not very different 
from that which persisted to its close. There is the King 
in his capital, there is the Peasant in his village; and the 
relations between King and Peasant give us, at any rate, 
the skeleton of the system. Hitherto the Hindu King has 
a1sually been presented by modern writers as an absolute 
despot, divine in his person, bound by the Sacred Law, 
and subject to the influence of public opinion, but untram- 
melled by any human institutions. More recently some 
[ndian scholars have depicted him as holding a position 
comparable to that of modern constitutional monarchs, 
responsible to, or controlled by, councils or assemblies. 
The difference, which I am quite incompetent to discuss, 
is immaterial to my present purpose The important thing 
is that the Sacred Law postulates, under the title of King, 
a sovereign in the technical sense; whether the King acted 
independently, or by and with the advice of Ministers or 
Councils, makes no difference to the statement which 
follows. 
I have chosen the word Peasant to denote the other party 
to the relation, because on the whole it seems to involve 
less danger of misconception than any substitute which