Preface. 
THE object and scope of this essay are described sufficiently 
in the Introduction, and here it is only necessary to mention 
a few points of detail which may be of assistance to the 
reader. 
I have tried to write in English, and to get away from 
the polyglot, and often ambiguous, jargon in which agrarian 
topics are commonly treated in India. In order to do this, 
I have had to frame a precise terminology, choosing those 
names which carry the fewest misleading connotations. 
The terms which I have selected for use are printed through- 
out with an initial capital letter, as a tacit reminder to the 
reader that they bear the definite sense which has been 
explained at their first mention. 
It has not, however, been possible to avoid altogether 
the introduction of Persian words and phrases, because 
the meaning of these frequently requires discussion, and 
the subject of the discussion must be indicated. In trans- 
literation I have used as a basis the system recommended 
by the Council of the Royal Asiatic Society, in which the 
vowels have the continental values, and the consonants 
are, where necessary, distinguished by lines or dots placed 
under them. Unfortunately, these lines and dots, which 
are indispensable to the linguistic scholar, are offensive to 
ordinary readers, and greatly increase the difficulty of 
accurate printing. Since I am writing mainly for students 
who are not interested in linguistic details, I have adopted 
the following compromise. 
(1) In the text, the transliteration is simplified. The 
vowels have the continental values, and the long vowels are 
marked as such: but the consonants are not distinguished, 
except that the otherwise unemployed g¢ is used to represent 
a particular Arabic guttural. An inverted comma denotes 
the Arabic letter ‘ain, in cases where its indication has 
seemed to be desirable.