ANTECEDENTS 
rq 
Shams Afif, and pargana becomes thenceforward the usual 
Persian phrase, though gasba retains its place as an occasional 
synonym. 
In Hindu times there were headmen and accountants for 
parganas and for villages. These positions continued to 
exist under the Moslems, but while two of the old designa- 
tions were adopted, for the others substitutes wereintroduced. 
The pargana-headman remained the chaudhri, the village- 
accountant remained the patwdri: the village-h~adman, on 
the other hand, was re-named mugaddam. and the pargana- 
accountant became gdnitngo. 
This diversity of practice is, I think, significant of the 
conditions in which the fusion of the Hindu and Moslem 
systems took place. So far as we can see, there was no 
attempt at systematic re-naming: if an Arabic or Persian 
equivalent lay ready to hand, it was employed, while a 
convenient Hindi designation might survive: a Persian 
name first adopted might give way to Hindi in course of 
time, and one Persian name might be displaced by another. 
The facts point to a fusion worked out by practical men, 
and not by theoretical jurists, men whose immediate object 
was to get in the revenue, and who, we may suspect, were 
ready to follow the line of least resistance, rather than seek 
for guidance from the Qazis and other professed expounders 
of Islamic law. 
This view is borne out by what we know of the attitude of 
the early Moslem Kings of Delhi. I have not found precise 
information on this point for the first half century, but 
regarding Balban, who was first deputy, and then actual, 
King for a total period of nearly forty years, we know? 
that in matters of administration he did what he thought 
was best, whether it was technically lawful or not. Alauddin 
Khalil explicitly claimed the same freedom, and exercised 
} Chaudhri and patwdri appear in Barni, 288. The specialisation ot the 
word mugaddam was apparently gradual: in some passages. in Barni it 
seems to point definitely to village-headmen, but in others it retains its 
gencral sense of ‘prominent men’: it had become definitely specialised 
in the sixteenth century. The first reference I have found to the ganiingo 
isin T. Sher Shahi (Elliot, iv. 414), but he appears there as an old-established 
institution. 
t For BRalban’s attitude, see Barni, 47; for Alduddin, td. 290if; for 
Muhammad Tughlaq, id. 401, 492. For Firdz, see Afi, 99, 129, and 
bassim