ANTECEDENTS 
1 
is available! The Peasant is the man who, whatever the 
incidents of his tenure may be, cultivates a holding entirely 
or mainly by his family labour, for his own profit, and at 
his own risk. He must be distinguished on the one hand 
from the Intermediary, who claims a share of the produce, 
but does not himself take an active part in production, 
and on the other hand from the serf whom he feeds, or 
the hired labourer to whom he pays wages. 
The Sacred Law? presents King and Peasant in a bilateral 
relation, which is defined more precisely in regard to duties 
than to rights. The duty of the Peasant is, firstly, to raise 
produce, and, secondly, to pay a share of his produce to 
the King. Performing these duties, he can expect the 
King’s protection, and he can enjoy the balance of his 
produce, subject, of course, to any rules for its expenditure 
contained in the Law. The King’s paramount duty is to 
protect his subjects; and, while he does so, he is entitled 
to claim a share of the Peasant’s produce, to be expended 
in accordance with the Law. In this statement the word 
“produce” is used in its natural meaning as the gross yield 
of the land, without deducting anything on account of the 
cost of production; in a later period we shall meet with a 
few cases where some allowance was made for exceptional 
expense, but I cannot trace any suggestion of assessing 
revenue formally on the net income further back than the 
period of British rule.® 
It may be well to point out that the statement which has 
just been given is not concerned with rights to occupy 
1 The possible alternatives are farmer, cultivator, ryot. ‘' Farmer" 
is too ambiguous in a country like India, where farming the revenue was 
for so long a prominent feature of the agrarian system. ‘‘ Cultivator,” 
the usual term in India, suggests to most English-speaking communities 
a modern implement of tillage. ‘‘Ryot’’ has changed its meaning in some 
parts of India since the Moslem period, and now connotes a particular 
form of tenure, while in others it has a more general signification, and it 
is thus ambiguous. 
} The statements in the text are based on the following volumes of the 
translations published in the series Sacred Books of the East: Manu (XXV): 
Vishnu (VII); Apastamba and Gautama (II); Vasishtha and Baudhavana 
(XIV); Narada and Brihaspati (XXXIII). 
# Since this paragraph was written, Dr. Bal Krishna has argued, in the 
Indian Journal of Ecomomics, July, 1927, that in the Hindu system, 
assessment was made on the net income. His argument does not appear 
to me to be convincing, but I must leave its examination to students of 
the period