THE LAST PHASE IN NORTHERN INDIA 177 
to the small charitable tenures, which I guess to be an 
institution of old standing; but the area falling under these 
heads is proportionately so small that they call for mention 
rather than detailed discussion. The real problem is the 
silence of the chronicles regarding the organisation of the 
peasants within the village. 
As to this problem, it is well to recall that the evidence 
available is very unequally distributed over the Moslem 
period. We have a comparatively large amount of detail 
regarding the efforts of a few outstanding administrators 
to deal directly with the individual peasants; but these 
are episodes only, when measured by years, and our sources 
are very imperfect for the much longer intervals when, in 
the absence of an Alauddin or a Sher Shah, we must assume 
that the revenue administration worked on lines too un- 
sensational to attract a chronicler’s attention. It is un- 
likely that we should hear much of a village organisation 
during the episodes of activity when the administration 
was trying to get behind that organisation to the individuals 
who composed it, while in the remainder of the period there 
was nothing for a chronicler to tell. 
The scanty indications of the existence of a regular 
organisation group themselves round the mugaddam, that 
is, the Headman, and the Accountant. We have seen that, 
at the end of the Moslem period, villages dealt with the 
authorities only through mugaddams, and the early English 
records show that the prominence of these men tended to 
obscure the position occupied by the other peasants, so 
that, just at first, some mugaddams looked like the land- 
owners for whom the English administrators were seeking. 
[t is safe to identify these prominent men with the mugad- 
dams mentioned in Aurangzeb’s farmdn to Rashik Das, 
where they appear as potential oppressors of the peasants. 
We may again identify the mugaddams of Aurangzeb’s time 
with those who appear in Akbar’s detailed instructions as 
taking part in the seasonal assessments; and also with the 
kaldntarin-i deh, whom the Emperor regarded as potential 
oppressors of the peasantry! Viewed from above, then, 
+ Aim, i. 286. Jarrett’s translation of the passage (ii. 45) is not exact. 
The compiler of this portion of the Ain used various words to denote the 
prominent men in a village—mugaddam, kalantaran-i deh. rais-i deh, etc.;