theme and the state eight agrarian society and the mughal...

THEMES IN INDIAN HISTORY – PART II196

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuriesabout 85 per cent of the population of India lived inits villages. Both peasants and landed elites wereinvolved in agricultural production and claimedrights to a share of the produce. This createdrelationships of cooperation, competition andconflict among them. The sum of these agrarianrelationships made up rural society.

At the same time agencies from outside alsoentered into the rural world. Most important amongthese was the Mughal state, which derived thebulk of its income from agricultural production.Agents of the state – revenue assessors, collectors,record keepers – sought to control rural society soas to ensure that cultivation took place and thestate got its regular share of taxes from theproduce. Since many crops were grown for sale,trade, money and markets entered the villages andlinked the agricultural areas with the towns.

1. Peasants and AgriculturalProduction

The basic unit of agricultural society was the village,inhabited by peasants who performed the manifoldseasonal tasks that made up agricultural productionthroughout the year – tilling the soil, sowing seeds,harvesting the crop when it was ripe. Further, theycontributed their labour to the production ofagro-based goods such as sugar and oil.

But rural India was not characterised by settledpeasant production alone. Several kinds of areassuch as large tracts of dry land or hilly regions werenot cultivable in the same way as the more fertile

Fig. 8.1A rural sceneDetail from a seventeenth-centuryMughal painting

Peasants, Zamindarsand the State

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expanses of land. In addition, forest areas made upa substantial proportion of territory. We need to keepthis varied topography in mind when discussingagrarian society.

1.1 Looking for sourcesOur understanding of the workings of rural society doesnot come from those who worked the land, as peasantsdid not write about themselves. Our major source forthe agrarian history of the sixteenth and earlyseventeenth centuries are chronicles and documentsfrom the Mughal court (see also Chapter 9).

One of the most important chronicles was theAin-i Akbari (in short the Ain, see also Section 8)authored by Akbar’s court historian Abu’l Fazl. Thistext meticulously recorded the arrangements madeby the state to ensure cultivation, to enable thecollection of revenue by the agencies of the stateand to regulate the relationship between the stateand rural magnates, the zamindars.

The central purpose of the Ain was to present avision of Akbar’s empire where social harmony wasprovided by a strong ruling class. Any revolt or assertionof autonomous power against the Mughal state was,in the eyes of the author of the Ain, predestined to fail.In other words, whatever we learn from the Ain aboutpeasants remains a view from the top.

Fortunately, however, the account of the Ain canbe supplemented by descriptions contained in sourcesemanating from regions away from the Mughalcapital. These include detailed revenue records fromGujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan dating fromthe seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Further,the extensive records of the East India Company (seealso Chapter 10) provide us with useful descriptionsof agrarian relations in eastern India. All thesesources record instances of conflicts betweenpeasants, zamindars and the state. In the processthey give us an insight into peasants’ perception ofand their expectations of fairness from the state.

1.2 Peasants and their landsThe term which Indo-Persian sources of the Mughalperiod most frequently used to denote a peasant wasraiyat (plural, riaya) or muzarian. In addition, wealso encounter the terms kisan or asami. Sources ofthe seventeenth century refer to two kinds ofpeasants – khud-kashta and pahi-kashta. The former

PEASANTS, ZAMINDARS AND THE STATE


were residents of the village in which they held theirlands. The latter were non-resident cultivators whobelonged to some other village, but cultivated landselsewhere on a contractual basis. People becamepahi-kashta either out of choice – for example, whenterms of revenue in a distant village were morefavourable – or out of compulsion – for example,forced by economic distress after a famine.

Seldom did the average peasant of north Indiapossess more than a pair of bullocks and twoploughs; most possessed even less. In Gujaratpeasants possessing about six acres of land wereconsidered to be affluent; in Bengal, on the otherhand, five acres was the upper limit of an averagepeasant farm; 10 acres would make one a rich asami.Cultivation was based on the principle of individualownership. Peasant lands were bought and sold inthe same way as the lands of other property owners.

This nineteenth-century description of peasantholdings in the Delhi-Agra region would apply equallyto the seventeenth century:

The cultivating peasants (asamis), who ploughup the fields, mark the limits of each field, foridentification and demarcation, with borders of(raised) earth, brick and thorn so that thousandsof such fields may be counted in a village.

1.3 Irrigation and technologyThe abundance of land, available labour and themobility of peasants were three factors thataccounted for the constant expansion of agriculture.Since the primary purpose of agriculture is to feedpeople, basic staples such as rice, wheat or milletswere the most frequently cultivated crops. Areaswhich received 40 inches or more of rainfall a yearwere generally rice-producing zones, followed bywheat and millets, corresponding to a descendingscale of precipitation.

Monsoons remained the backbone of Indianagriculture, as they are even today. But there werecrops which required additional water. Artificialsystems of irrigation had to be devised for this.

Peasants on the move

This was a feature of agrariansociety which struck a keenobserver like Babur, the firstMughal emperor, forcefullyenough for him to write about itin the Babur Nama, his memoirs:

In Hindustan hamlets andvillages, towns indeed, aredepopulated and set up ina moment! If the people of alarge town, one inhabitedfor years even, flee from it,they do it in such a way thatnot a sign or trace of themremains in a day and a half.On the other hand, if theyfix their eyes on a place tosettle, they need not digwater courses because theircrops are all rain-grown,and as the population ofHindustan is unlimited itswarms in. They make a tankor a well; they need not buildhouses or set up walls …khas-grass abounds, woodis unlimited, huts are made,and straightaway there is avillage or a town!

Source 1

Describe the aspectsof agricultural life thatstruck Babur asparticular to regions innorthern India.

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Irrigating trees and fields

This is an excerpt from the Babur Nama that describes theirrigation devices the emperor observed in northern India:

The greater part of Hindustan country is situated on level land.Many though its towns and cultivated lands are, it nowherehas running waters … For … water is not at all a necessity incultivating crops and orchards. Autumn crops grow by thedownpour of the rains themselves; and strange it is that springcrops grow even when no rains fall. (However) to young treeswater is made to flow by means of buckets or wheels …

In Lahore, Dipalpur (both in present-day Pakistan) and thoseother parts, people water by means of a wheel. They make twocircles of rope long enough to suit the depths of the well, fixstrips of wood between them, and on these fasten pitchers.The ropes with the wood and attached pitchers are put overthe wheel-well. At one end of the wheel-axle a second wheel isfixed, and close to it another on an upright axle. The last wheelthe bullock turns; its teeth catch in the teeth of the second(wheel), and thus the wheel with the pitchers is turned. Atrough is set where the water empties from the pitchers andfrom this the water is conveyed everywhere.

In Agra, Chandwar, Bayana (all in present-day Uttar Pradesh)and those parts again, people water with a bucket … At thewell-edge they set up a fork of wood, having a roller adjustedbetween the forks, tie a rope to a large bucket, put the ropeover a roller, and tie its other end to the bullock. One personmust drive the bullock, another empty the bucket.

Compare theirrigation devicesobserved by Babur withwhat you have learntabout irrigation inVijayanagara(Chapter 7). What kindof resources would eachof these systemsrequire? Which systemscould ensure theparticipation of peasantsin improvingagricultural technology?

Fig. 8.2A reconstructed Persianwheel, described here

Source 2



Irrigation projects received state support as well.For example, in northern India the state undertookdigging of new canals (nahr, nala) and also repairedold ones like the shahnahr in the Punjab during ShahJahan’s reign.

Though agriculture was labour intensive, peasantsdid use technologies that often harnessed cattleenergy. One example was the wooden plough, whichwas light and easily assembled with an iron tip orcoulter. It therefore did not make deep furrows, whichpreserved the moisture better during the intenselyhot months. A drill, pulled by a pair of giant oxen,was used to plant seeds, but broadcasting ofseed was the most prevalent method. Hoeing andweeding were done simultaneously using a narrowiron blade with a small wooden handle.

1.4 An abundance of cropsAgriculture was organised around two majorseasonal cycles, the kharif (autumn) and the rabi(spring). This would mean that most regions, exceptthose terrains that were the most arid orinhospitable, produced a minimum of two crops ayear (do-fasla), whereas some, where rainfall orirrigation assured a continuous supply of water, evengave three crops. This ensured an enormous varietyof produce. For instance, we are told in the Ain thatthe Mughal provinces of Agra produced 39 varietiesof crops and Delhi produced 43 over the two seasons.Bengal produced 50 varieties of rice alone.

However, the focus on the cultivation of basicstaples did not mean that agriculture in medievalIndia was only for subsistence. We often come acrossthe term jins-i kamil (literally, perfect crops) in oursources. The Mughal state also encouraged peasantsto cultivate such crops as they brought in morerevenue. Crops such as cotton and sugarcane werejins-i kamil par excellence. Cotton was grown over agreat swathe of territory spread over central Indiaand the Deccan plateau, whereas Bengal was famousfor its sugar. Such cash crops would also includevarious sorts of oilseeds (for example, mustard) andlentils. This shows how subsistence and commercialproduction were closely intertwined in an averagepeasant’s holding.

During the seventeenth century several new cropsfrom different parts of the world reached the Indian

The spread of tobaccoThis plant, which arrived firstin the Deccan, spread tonorthern India in the early yearsof the seventeenth century. TheAin does not mention tobaccoin the lists of crops in northernIndia. Akbar and his nobles cameacross tobacco for the first timein 1604. At this time smokingtobacco (in hookahs or chillums)seems to have caught on ina big way. Jahangir was soconcerned about its addictionthat he banned it. This was totallyineffective because by theend of the seventeenth century,tobacco had become a majorarticle of consumption, cultivationand trade all over India.

Agricultural prosperityand population growthOne important outcome of suchvaried and flexible forms ofagricultural production wasa slow demographic growth.Despite periodic disruptionscaused by famines andepidemics, India’s populationincreased, according tocalculations by economichistorians, by about 50 millionpeople between 1600 and 1800,which is an increase of about33 per cent over 200 years.

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subcontinent. Maize (makka), for example, wasintroduced into India via Africa and Spain and bythe seventeenth century it was being listed as oneof the major crops of western India. Vegetables liketomatoes, potatoes and chillies were introduced fromthe New World at this time, as were fruits like thepineapple and the papaya.

2. The Village CommunityThe above account makes it clear that agriculturalproduction involved the intensive participation andinitiative of the peasantry. How did this affect thestructure of agrarian relations in Mughal society?To find out, let us look at the social groups involvedin agricultural expansion, and at their relationshipsand conflicts.

We have seen that peasants held their lands inindividual ownership. At the same time they belongedto a collective village community as far as manyaspects of their social existence were concerned.There were three constituents of this community –the cultivators, the panchayat, and the villageheadman (muqaddam or mandal).

2.1 Caste and the rural milieuDeep inequities on the basis of caste and other caste-like distinctions meant that the cultivators were ahighly heterogeneous group. Among those who tilledthe land, there was a sizeable number who workedas menials or agriculturallabourers (majur).

Despite the abundance ofcultivable land, certain castegroups were assigned menialtasks and thus relegated topoverty. Though there wasno census at that time, thelittle data that we havesuggest that such groupscomprised a large section ofthe village population, hadthe least resources and wereconstrained by their positionin the caste hierarchy, muchlike the Dalits of modernIndia. Such distinctions hadbegun permeating into other

Discuss...Identify the technologiesand agricultural practicesdescribed in this section thatappear similar to or differentfrom those described inChapter 2.


Fig. 8.3An early nineteenth-centurypainting depicting a village inthe Punjab

Describe what women andmen are shown doing in theillustration as well as thearchitecture of the village.


communities too. In Muslim communities menials likethe halalkhoran (scavengers) were housed outside theboundaries of the village; similarly the mallahzadas(literally, sons of boatmen) in Bihar were comparableto slaves.

There was a direct correlation between caste,poverty and social status at the lower strata ofsociety. Such correlations were not so marked atintermediate levels. In a manual from seventeenth-century Marwar, Rajputs are mentioned as peasants,sharing the same space with Jats, who were accordeda lower status in the caste hierarchy. The Gauravas,who cultivated land around Vrindavan (UttarPradesh), sought Rajput status in the seventeenthcentury. Castes such as the Ahirs, Gujars and Malisrose in the hierarchy because of the profitability ofcattle rearing and horticulture. In the easternregions, intermediate pastoral and fishing casteslike the Sadgops and Kaivartas acquired the statusof peasants.

2.2 Panchayats and headmenThe village panchayat was an assembly of elders,usually important people of the village with hereditaryrights over their property. In mixed-caste villages,the panchayat was usually a heterogeneous body. Anoligarchy, the panchayat represented various castesand communities in the village, though the villagemenial-cum-agricultural worker was unlikely to berepresented there. The decisions made by thesepanchayats were binding on the members.

The panchayat was headed by a headman knownas muqaddam or mandal. Some sources suggest thatthe headman was chosen through the consensus ofthe village elders, and that this choice had to beratified by the zamindar. Headmen held office as longas they enjoyed the confidence of the village elders,failing which they could be dismissed by them. Thechief function of the headman was to supervise thepreparation of village accounts, assisted by theaccountant or patwari of the panchayat.

The panchayat derived its funds fromcontributions made by individuals to a commonfinancial pool. These funds were used for defrayingthe costs of entertaining revenue officials whovisited the village from time to time. Expenses forcommunity welfare activities such as tiding over

Corrupt mandalsThe mandals often misused theirpositions. They were principallyaccused of defrauding villageaccounts in connivance with thepatwari, and for underassessingthe revenue they owed fromtheir own lands in order to passthe additional burden on to thesmaller cultivator.

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Fig. 8.4An early nineteenth-centurypainting depicting a meeting ofvillage elders and tax collectors

natural calamities (likefloods), were also met fromthese funds. Often thesefunds were also deployed inconstruction of a bund ordigging a canal whichpeasants usually could notafford to do on their own.

One important function ofthe panchayat was to ensurethat caste boundaries amongthe various communitiesinhabiting the village wereupheld. In eastern India allmarriages were held in thepresence of the mandal. In other words one of theduties of the village headman was to oversee theconduct of the members of the village community“chiefly to prevent any offence against their caste”.

Panchayats also had the authority to levy finesand inflict more serious forms of punishment likeexpulsion from the community. The latter was adrastic step and was in most cases meted out for alimited period. It meant that a person forced to leavethe village became an outcaste and lost his rightto practise his profession. Such a measure wasintended as a deterrent to violation of caste norms.

In addition to the village panchayat each casteor jati in the village had its own jati panchayat.These panchayats wielded considerable powerin rural society. In Rajasthan jati panchayatsarbitrated civil disputes between members ofdifferent castes. They mediated in contested claimson land, decided whether marriages were performedaccording to the norms laid down by a particularcaste group, determined who had ritual precedencein village functions, and so on. In most cases,except in matters of criminal justice, the staterespected the decisions of jati panchayats.

Archival records from western India – notablyRajasthan and Maharashtra – contain petitionspresented to the panchayat complaining aboutextortionate taxation or the demand for unpaidlabour (begar) imposed by the “superior” castes orofficials of the state. These petitions were usuallymade by villagers, from the lowest rungs of ruralsociety. Often petitions were made collectively as


How has the artistdifferentiated between thevillage elders and thetax collectors?


well, by a caste group or a community protestingagainst what they considered were morallyillegitimate demands on the part of elite groups.These included excessive tax demands which,especially in times of drought or other disasters,endangered the peasants’ subsistence. In the eyesof the petitioners the right to the basic minimum forsurvival was sanctioned by custom. They regardedthe village panchayat as the court of appeal thatwould ensure that the state carried out its moralobligations and guaranteed justice.

The decision of the panchayat inconflicts between “lower -caste”peasants and state officials or thelocal zamindar could vary fromcase to case. In cases of excessiverevenue demands, the panchayatoften suggested compromise. Incases where reconciliation failed,peasants took recourse to moredrastic forms of resistance, such asdeserting the village. The relativelyeasy availability of uncultivated landand the competition over labourresources made this an effectiveweapon in the hands of cultivators.

2.3 Village artisansAnother interesting aspect ofthe village was the elaboraterelationship of exchange betweendifferent producers. Marathidocuments and village surveysmade in the early years of Britishrule have revealed the existence ofsubstantial numbers of artisans,sometimes as high as 25 per cent ofthe total households in the villages.

At times, however, the distinctionbetween artisans and peasants invillage society was a fluid one, asmany groups performed the tasksof both. Cultivators and theirfamilies would also participate incraft production – such as dyeing,textile printing, baking and firingof pottery, making and repairing

Fig. 8.5A seventeenth-century paintingdepicting textile production

Describe the activities thatare shown in the illustration.

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agricultural implements. Phases in the agriculturalcalendar when there was a relative lull in activity,as between sowing and weeding or between weedingand harvesting, were a time when cultivators couldengage in artisanal production.

Village artisans – potters, blacksmiths, carpenters,barbers, even goldsmiths – provided specialisedservices in return for which they were compensatedby villagers by a variety of means. The most commonway of doing so was by giving them a share of theharvest, or an allotment of land, perhaps cultivablewastes, which was likely to be decided by thepanchayat. In Maharashtra such lands became theartisans’ miras or watan – their hereditary holding.

Another variant of this was a system whereartisans and individual peasant households enteredinto a mutually negotiated system of remuneration,most of the time goods for services. For example,eighteenth-century records tell us of zamindars inBengal who remunerated blacksmiths, carpenters,even goldsmiths for their work by paying them “asmall daily allowance and diet money”. This latercame to be described as the jajmani system,though the term was not in vogue in the sixteenthand seventeenth centuries. Such evidence isinteresting because it indicates the intricate waysin which exchange networks operated at themicro-level of the village. Cash remuneration wasnot entirely unknown either.

2.4 A “little republic”?How does one understand the significance of thevillage community? Some British officials in thenineteenth century saw the village as a “littlerepublic” made up of fraternal partners sharingresources and labour in a collective. However, thiswas not a sign of rural egalitarianism. There wasindividual ownership of assets and deep inequitiesbased on caste and gender distinctions. A groupof powerful individuals decided the affairs of thevillage, exploited the weaker sections and had theauthority to dispense justice.

More importantly, a cash nexus had alreadydeveloped through trade between villages and towns.In the Mughal heartland too, revenue was assessedand collected in cash. Artisans producing for theexport market (for example, weavers) received their



advances or wages in cash, as did producers ofcommercial products like cotton, silk or indigo.

Discuss...In what ways do you think the panchayatsdescribed in this section were similar to ordifferent from present-day gram panchayats?

3. Women in Agrarian SocietyAs you may have observed in many different societies,the production process often involves men andwomen performing certain specified roles. In thecontexts that we are exploring, women and men hadto work shoulder to shoulder in the fields. Mentilled and ploughed, while women sowed, weeded,threshed and winnowed the harvest. With the growthof nucleated villages and expansion in individuatedpeasant farming, which characterised medievalIndian agriculture, the basis of production was thelabour and resources of the entire household.Naturally, a gendered segregation between the home(for women) and the world (for men) was not possiblein this context. Nonetheless biases related to women’sbiological functions did continue. Menstruatingwomen, for instance, were not allowed to touch theplough or the potter’s wheel in western India, orenter the groves where betel-leaves (paan) weregrown in Bengal.

Artisanal tasks such as spinning yarn, sifting andkneading clay for pottery, and embroidery were amongthe many aspects of production dependent on femalelabour. The more commercialised the product, thegreater the demand on women’s labour to produce it.In fact, peasant and artisan women worked not onlyin the fields, but even went to the houses of theiremployers or to the markets if necessary.

Women were considered an important resource inagrarian society also because they were child bearersin a society dependent on labour. At the same time,high mortality rates among women – owing tomalnutrition, frequent pregnancies, death duringchildbirth – often meant a shortage of wives. Thisled to the emergence of social customs in peasantand artisan communities that were distinct from

Money in the villageThe seventeenth-century Frenchtraveller Jean-Baptiste Tavernierfound it remarkable that in“India a village must be very smallindeed if it has not a money-changer called a Shroff. (They)act as bankers to makeremittances of money (andwho) enhance the rupee asthey please for paisa and thepaisa for these (cowrie) shells”.

Fig. 8.7A woman spinning thread

Fig. 8.6A shroff at work

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those prevalent among elite groups. Marriages inmany rural communities required the payment ofbride-price rather than dowry to the bride’s family.Remarriage was considered legitimate both amongdivorced and widowed women.

The importance attached to women as areproductive force also meant that the fear of losingcontrol over them was great. According to establishedsocial norms, the household was headed by a male.Thus women were kept under strict control by themale members of the family and the community.They could inflict draconian punishments if theysuspected infidelity on the part of women.

Documents from Western India – Rajasthan, Gujaratand Maharashtra – record petitions sent by women tothe village panchayat, seeking redress and justice.Wives protested against the infidelity of theirhusbands or the neglect of the wife and children bythe male head of the household, the grihasthi. Whilemale infidelity was not always punished, the stateand “superior” caste groups did intervene when it cameto ensuring that the family was adequately providedfor. In most cases when women petitioned to thepanchayat, their names were excluded from therecord: the petitioner was referred to as the mother,sister or wife of the male head of the household.

Amongst the landed gentry, women had the rightto inherit property. Instances from the Punjab showthat women, including widows, actively participatedin the rural land market as sellers of property inheritedby them. Hindu and Muslim women inheritedzamindaris which they were free to sell or mortgage.Women zamindars were known in eighteenth-centuryBengal. In fact, one of the biggest and most famous ofthe eighteenth-century zamindaris, that of Rajshahi,had a woman at the helm.

Fig. 8.8 bWomen carrying loadsMigrant women from neighbouringvillages often worked at suchconstruction sites.


Fig. 8.8 aThe construction of Fatehpur Sikri –women crushing stones

Discuss...Are there any differences in the access men andwomen have to agricultural land in your state?


4. Forests and Tribes4.1 Beyond settled villagesThere was more to rural India than sedentaryagriculture. Apart from the intensively cultivatedprovinces in northern and north-western India,huge swathes of forests – dense forest (jangal) orscrubland (kharbandi) – existed all over easternIndia, central India, northern India (including theTerai on the Indo-Nepal border), Jharkhand, and inpeninsular India down the Western Ghats and theDeccan plateau. Though it is nearly impossible toset an all-India average of the forest cover for thisperiod, informed conjectures based on contemporarysources suggest an average of 40 per cent.

Forest dwellers were termed jangli incontemporary texts. Being jangli, however, did

not mean an absence of “civilisation”,as popular usage of the term todayseems to connote. Rather, the termdescribed those whose livelihoodcame from the gathering of forestproduce, hunting and shiftingagriculture. These activities werelargely season specific. Among theBhils, for example, spring was reservedfor collecting forest produce, summerfor fishing, the monsoon monthsfor cultivation, and autumn andwinter for hunting. Such a sequencepresumed and perpetuated mobility,which was a distinctive feature oftribes inhabiting these forests.

For the state, the forest was asubversive place – a place of refuge(mawas) for troublemakers. Onceagain, we turn to Babur who says thatjungles provided a good defence “behindwhich the people of the parganabecome stubbornly rebellious andpay no taxes”.

4.2 Inroads into forestsExternal forces entered the forest indifferent ways. For instance, the staterequired elephants for the army. Sothe peshkash levied from forest peopleoften included a supply of elephants.

Fig. 8.9Painting of Shah Jahan huntingnilgais ( from the Badshah Nama)

Describe what you seein this painting. What is thesymbolic element that helpsestablish the connectionbetween the hunt andideal justice?

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In the Mughal political ideology, the huntsymbolised the overwhelming concern of the stateto ensure justice to all its subjects, rich and poor.Regular hunting expeditions, so court historians tellus, enabled the emperor to travel across the extensiveterritories of his empire and personally attend to thegrievances of its inhabitants. The hunt was a subjectfrequently painted by court artists. The painterresorted to the device of inserting a small scenesomewhere in the picture that functioned as a symbolof a harmonious reign.

Clearance of forests foragricultural settlements

This is an excerpt from a sixteenth-century Bengali poem,Chandimangala, composed by Mukundaram Chakrabarti.The hero of the poem, Kalaketu, set up a kingdom byclearing forests:

Hearing the news, outsiders came from various lands.

Kalaketu then bought and distributed among them

Heavy knives, axes, battle-axes and pikes.

From the north came the Das (people)

One hundred of them advanced.

They were struck with wonder on seeing Kalaketu

Who distributed betel-nut to each of them.

From the south came the harvesters

Five hundred of them under one organiser.

From the west came Zafar Mian,

Together with twenty-two thousand men.

Sulaimani beads in their hands

They chanted the names of their pir and paighambar(Prophet).

Having cleared the forest

They established markets.

Hundreds and hundreds of foreigners

Ate and entered the forest.

Hearing the sound of the axe,

Tigers became apprehensive and ran away, roaring.

Pargana was an administrativesubdivision of a Mughal province.

Source 3

What forms of intrusion intothe forest does the text evoke?Compare its message with thatof the miniature painting inFig. 8.9. Who are the peopleidentified as “foreigners” from theperspective of the forest dwellers?


Peshkash was a form of tributecollected by the Mughal state.


Trade between the hill tribesand the plains, c. 1595

This is how Abu’l Fazl describes the transactions betweenthe hill tribes and the plains in the suba of Awadh (partof present-day Uttar Pradesh):

From the northern mountains quantities of goods arecarried on the backs of men, of stout ponies and ofgoats, such as gold, copper, lead, musk, tails of thekutas cow (the yak), honey, chuk (an acid composedof orange juice and lemon boi led together) ,pomegranate seed, ginger, long pepper, majith (a plantproducing a red dye) root, borax, zedoary (a rootresembling turmeric), wax, woollen stuffs, woodenware, hawks, falcons, black falcons, merlins (a kind ofbird), and other articles. In exchange they carry backwhite and coloured cloths, amber, salt, asafoetida,ornaments, glass and earthen ware.

The spread of commercial agriculture was animportant external factor that impinged on the livesof those who lived in the forests. Forest products –like honey, beeswax and gum lac – were in greatdemand. Some, such as gum lac, became major itemsof overseas export from India in the seventeenthcentury. Elephants were also captured and sold.Trade involved an exchange of commodities throughbarter as well. Some tribes, like the Lohanis in thePunjab, were engaged in overland trade, betweenIndia and Afghanistan, and in the town-countrytrade in the Punjab itself.

Social factors too wrought changes in the lives offorest dwellers. Like the “big men” of the villagecommunity, tribes also had their chieftains. Manytribal chiefs had become zamindars, some evenbecame kings. For this they required to build up anarmy. They recruited people from their lineagegroups or demanded that their fraternity providemilitary service. Tribes in the Sind region had armiescomprising 6,000 cavalry and 7,000 infantry. InAssam, the Ahom kings had their paiks, people whowere obliged to render military service in exchangefor land. The capture of wild elephants was declareda royal monopoly by the Ahom kings.

Fig. 8.10A peasant and a hunter listeningto a sufi singer

Source 4

What are the modes oftransport described in thispassage? Why do you thinkthey were used? Explain whateach of the articles brought fromthe plains to the hills may havebeen used for.

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Though the transition from a tribal to amonarchical system had started much earlier, theprocess seems to have become fully developed onlyby the sixteenth century. This can be seen fromthe Ain’s observations on the existence of tribalkingdoms in the north-east. War was a commonoccurrence. For instance, the Koch kings foughtand subjugated a number of neighbouring tribes ina long sequence of wars through the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries.

New cultural influences also began to penetrateinto forested zones. Some historians have indeedsuggested that sufi saints (pirs) played a major rolein the slow acceptance of Islam among agriculturalcommunities emerging in newly colonised places(see also Chapter 6).

5. The ZamindarsOur story of agrarian relations in Mughal India willnot be complete without referring to a class ofpeople in the countryside that lived off agriculturebut did not participate directly in the processes ofagricultural production. These were the zamindarswho were landed proprietors who also enjoyed certainsocial and economic privileges by virtue of theirsuperior status in rural society. Caste was one factorthat accounted for the elevated status of zamindars;another factor was that they performed certainservices (khidmat) for the state.

The zamindars held extensive personal landstermed milkiyat, meaning property. Milkiyat landswere cultivated for the private use of zamindars,often with the help of hired or servile labour. Thezamindars could sell, bequeath or mortgage theselands at will.

Zamindars also derived their power from the factthat they could often collect revenue on behalf ofthe state, a service for which they were compensatedfinancially. Control over military resources wasanother source of power. Most zamindars hadfortresses (qilachas) as well as an armed contingentcomprising units of cavalry, artillery and infantry.

Thus if we visualise social relations in theMughal countryside as a pyramid, zamindars clearlyconstituted its very narrow apex. Abu’l Fazl’s accountindicates that an “upper-caste”, Brahmana-Rajput

Discuss...Find out which areas arecurrently identified as forestzones in your state. Is life inthese areas changing today?Are the factors responsible forthese changes different fromor identical to thosementioned in this section?



combine had already established firm controlover rural society. It also reflects a fairly largerepresentation from the so-called intermediate castes,as we saw earlier, as well as a liberal sprinkling ofMuslim zamindaris.

Contemporary documents give an impression thatconquest may have been the source of the origin ofsome zamindaris. The dispossession of weaker peopleby a powerful military chieftain was quite often away of expanding a zamindari. It is, however, unlikelythat the state would have allowed such a show ofaggression by a zamindar unless he had beenconfirmed by an imperial order (sanad ).

More important were the slow processes ofzamindari consolidation, which are also documentedin sources. These involved colonisation of new lands,by transfer of rights, by order of the state and bypurchase. These were the processes which perhapspermitted people belonging to the relatively “lower”castes to enter the rank of zamindars as zamindariswere bought and sold quite briskly in this period.

A combination of factors also allowed theconsolidation of clan- or lineage-based zamindaris.For example, the Rajputs and Jats adopted thesestrategies to consolidate their control over vastswathes of territory in northern India. Likewise,peasant-pastoralists (like the Sadgops) carved outpowerful zamindaris in areas of central and south-western Bengal.

Zamindars spearheaded the colonisation ofagricultural land, and helped in settling cultivatorsby providing them with the means of cultivation,including cash loans. The buying and selling ofzamindaris accelerated the process of monetisationin the countryside. In addition, zamindars sold theproduce from their milkiyat lands. There is evidenceto show that zamindars often established markets (haats)to which peasants also came to sell their produce.

Although there can be little doubt that zamindarswere an exploitative class, their relationship with thepeasantry had an element of reciprocity, paternalismand patronage. Two aspects reinforce this view. First,the bhakti saints, who eloquently condemnedcaste-based and other forms of oppression (see alsoChapter 6), did not portray the zamindars (or,interestingly, the moneylender) as exploiters oroppressors of the peasantry. Usually it was the

A parallel army!According to the Ain, thecombined military strength ofthe zamindars in Mughal Indiawas 384,558 cavalry, 4,277,057infantry, 1,863 elephants, 4,260cannons, and 4,500 boats.

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revenue official of the state who was the object of theirire. Second, in a large number of agrarian uprisingswhich erupted in north India in the seventeenthcentury, zamindars often received the support of thepeasantry in their struggle against the state.

6. Land Revenue SystemRevenue from the land was the economic mainstayof the Mughal Empire. It was therefore vital for thestate to create an administrative apparatus to ensurecontrol over agricultural production, and to fix andcollect revenue from across the length and breadthof the rapidly expanding empire. This apparatusincluded the office (daftar) of the diwan who wasresponsible for supervising the fiscal system of theempire. Thus revenue officials and record keeperspenetrated the agricultural domain and became adecisive agent in shaping agrarian relations.

The Mughal state tried to first acquire specificinformation about the extent of the agriculturallands in the empire and what these lands producedbefore fixing the burden of taxes on people. Theland revenue arrangements consisted of twostages – first, assessment and then actual collection.The jama was the amount assessed, as opposed tohasil, the amount collected. In his list of duties ofthe amil-guzar or revenue collector, Akbar decreedthat while he should strive to make cultivators payin cash, the option of payment in kind was also tobe kept open. While fixing revenue, the attempt ofthe state was to maximise its claims. The scope ofactually realising these claims was, however,sometimes thwarted by local conditions.

Both cultivated and cultivable lands were measuredin each province. The Ain compiled the aggregates ofsuch lands during Akbar’s rule. Efforts to measurelands continued under subsequent emperors. Forinstance, in 1665, Aurangzeb expressly instructed hisrevenue officials to prepare annual records of thenumber of cultivators in each village (Source 7). Yetnot all areas were measured successfully. As we haveseen, forests covered huge areas of the subcontinentand thus remained unmeasured.

Discuss...The zamindari system wasabolished in India afterIndependence. Read throughthis section and identifyreasons why this was done.



Amin was an official responsiblefor ensuring that imperialregulations were carried out inthe provinces.

Classification of lands under Akbar

The following is a listing of criteria of classification excerptedfrom the Ain:

The Emperor Akbar in his profound sagacity classifiedthe lands and fixed a different revenue to be paid byeach. Polaj is land which is annually cultivated for eachcrop in succession and is never allowed to lie fallow.Parauti is land left out of cultivation for a time that itmay recover its strength. Chachar is land that haslain fallow for three or four years. Banjar is landuncultivated for five years and more. Of the first twokinds of land, there are three classes, good, middling,and bad. They add together the produce of each sort,and the third of this represents the medium produce,one-third part of which is exacted as the Royal dues.

The mansabdari systemThe Mughal administrativesystem had at its apex a military-cum-bureaucratic apparatus(mansabdari) which wasresponsible for looking after thecivil and military affairs of thestate. Some mansabdars werepaid in cash (naqdi), while themajority of them were paidthrough assignments of revenue(jagirs) in different regions of theempire. They were transferredperiodically. See also Chapter 9.

Source 5

What principles did theMughal state follow whileclassifying lands in its territories?How was revenue assessed?

Map 1The expansion of the Mughal Empire

What impact do you thinkthe expansion of the empirewould have had on land revenuecollection?

Samarqand

Balkh

Kabul

QandaharLahore

Panipat

DelhiAgra

Amber

Ajmer PatnaRohtas

Goa

Babur’s reign, 1530

Akbar’s reign, 1605

Aurangzeb’s reign, 1707

Arabian Sea Bay of Bengal

Sketch map not to scale

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The jama

This is an excerpt fromAurangzeb’s order to hisrevenue official, 1665:

He should direct the amins ofthe parganas that they shoulddiscover the actual conditionsof cultivation (maujudat),village by village, peasant-wise(asamiwar), and after minutescrutiny, assess the jama,keeping in view the financialinterests (kifayat) of thegovernment, and the welfareof the peasantry.

Source 6

The Ain on land revenue collection:

Let him (the amil-guzar) not make it a practice oftaking only in cash but also in kind. The latter iseffected in several ways. First, kankut : in the Hindilanguage kan signifies grain, and kut, estimates … Ifany doubts arise, the crops should be cut andestimated in three lots, the good, the middling, andthe inferior, and the hesitation removed. Often, too,the land taken by appraisement, gives a sufficientlyaccurate return. Secondly, batai, also called bhaoli,the crops are reaped and stacked and divided byagreement in the presence of the parties. But in thiscase several intelligent inspectors are required;otherwise, the evil-minded and false are given todeception. Thirdly, khet-batai, when they divide thefields after they are sown. Fourthly, lang batai , aftercutting the grain, they form it in heaps and divide itamong themselves, and each takes his share homeand turns it to profit.

Discuss...Would you consider the land revenue system ofthe Mughals as a flexible one?

7. The Flow of SilverThe Mughal Empire was among the large territorialempires in Asia that had managed to consolidate powerand resources during the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies. These empires were the Ming (China),Safavid (Iran) and Ottoman (Turkey). The politicalstability achieved by all these empires helped createvibrant networks of overland trade from China to theMediterranean Sea. Voyages of discovery and theopening up of the New World resulted in a massiveexpansion of Asia’s (particularly India’s) trade withEurope. This resulted in a greater geographicaldiversity of India’s overseas trade as well as an

What difference would each of the systemsof assessment and collection of revenue havemade to the cultivator?

Source 7

Why do you thinkthe emperor insistedon a detailed survey?


Cash or kind?

Fig. 8.11A silver rupya issued by Akbar(obverse and reverse)


expansion in the commodity composition of this trade.An expanding trade brought in huge amounts of silverbullion into Asia to pay for goods procured from India,and a large part of that bullion gravitated towardsIndia. This was good for India as it did not havenatural resources of silver. As a result, the periodbetween the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries wasalso marked by a remarkable stability in theavailability of metal currency, particularly the silverrupya in India. This facilitated an unprecedentedexpansion of minting of coins and the circulation ofmoney in the economy as well as the ability of theMughal state to extract taxes and revenue in cash.

The testimony of an Italian traveller, GiovanniCareri, who passed through India c. 1690, providesa graphic account about the way silver travelledacross the globe to reach India. It also gives us an ideaof the phenomenal amounts of cash and commoditytransactions in seventeenth-century India.

Discuss...Find out whether there areany taxes on agriculturalproduction at present inyour state. Explain thesimilarities and differencesbetween Mughal fiscalpolicies and those adoptedby present-day stategovernments.

Fig. 8.12A silver rupya issued by Aurangzeb

Fig. 8.13An example of textiles produced inthe subcontinent to meet thedemands of European markets

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How silver came to India

This excerpt from Giovanni Careri’s account (based on Bernier’s account) gives anidea of the enormous amount of wealth that found its way into the Mughal Empire:

That the Reader may form some idea of the Wealth of this (Mughal) Empire, he is toobserve that all the Gold and Silver, which circulates throughout the World at lastCentres here. It is well known that as much of it comes out of America, after runningthrough several Kingdoms of Europe, goes partly into Turky (Turkey), for severalsorts of Commodities; and part into Persia, by the way of Smirna for Silk. Now theTurks not being able to abstain from Coffee, which comes from Hyeman (Oman),and Arabia … nor Persia, Arabia, and the Turks themselves to go without thecommodities of India, send vast quantities of Mony (money) to Moka (Mocha) onthe Red Sea, near Babel Mandel; to Bassora (Basra) at the bottom of the PersianGulgh (Gulf); … which is afterwards sent over in Ships to Indostan (Hindustan).Besides the Indian, Dutch, English, and Portuguese Ships, that every Year carry theCommodities of Indostan, to Pegu, Tanasserri (parts of Myanmar), Siam (Thailand),Ceylon (Sri Lanka) … the Maldive Islands, Mozambique and other Places, must ofnecessity convey much Gold and Silver thither, from those Countries. All that theDutch fetch from the Mines in Japan, sooner or later, goes to Indostan; and thegoods carry’d hence into Europe, whether to France, England, or Portugal, are allpurchas’d for ready Mony, which remains there.

Source 8

8. The Ain-i Akbari of Abu’lFazl Allami

The Ain-i Akbari was the culmination of a largehistorical, administrative project of classificationundertaken by Abu’l Fazl at the order of EmperorAkbar. It was completed in 1598, the forty-secondregnal year of the emperor, after having gone throughfive revisions. The Ain was part of a larger projectof history writing commissioned by Akbar. Thishistory, known as the Akbar Nama, comprised threebooks. The first two provided a historical narrative.We will look at these parts more closely in Chapter9. The Ain-i Akbari, the third book, was organisedas a compendium of imperial regulations and agazetteer of the empire.

The Ain gives detailed accounts of the organisationof the court, administration and army, the sourcesof revenue and the physical layout of the provincesof Akbar’s empire and the literary, cultural andreligious traditions of the people. Along with adescription of the various departments of Akbar’sgovernment and elaborate descriptions of the



various provinces (subas) of the empire, the Aingives us intricate quantitative information ofthose provinces.

Collecting and compiling this informationsystematically was an important imperial exercise.It informed the emperor about the varied and diversecustoms and practices prevailing across hisextensive territories. The Ain is therefore a mine ofinformation for us about the Mughal Empire duringAkbar’s reign. It is important, however, to keep inmind that this is a view of the regions from thecentre, a view of society from its apex.

The Ain is made up of five books (daftars), of whichthe first three books describe the administration.The first book, called manzil-abadi, concerns theimperial household and its maintenance. The secondbook, sipah-abadi, covers the military and civiladministration and the establishment of servants.This book includes notices and short biographicalsketches of imperial officials (mansabdars), learnedmen, poets and artists.

The third book, mulk-abadi, is the one which dealswith the fiscal side of the empire and provides richquantitative information on revenue rates, followedby the “Account of the Twelve Provinces”. This sectionhas detailed statistical information, which includesthe geographic, topographic and economic profile ofall subas and their administrative and fiscaldivisions (sarkars, parganas and mahals), totalmeasured area, and assessed revenue ( jama ).

After setting out details at the suba level, the Aingoes on to give a detailed picture of the sarkars belowthe suba. This it does in the form of tables, whichhave eight columns giving the following information:(1) parganat/mahal; (2) qila (forts); (3) arazi andzamin-i paimuda (measured area); (4) naqdi, revenueassessed in cash; (5) suyurghal, grants of revenue incharity; (6) zamindars; columns 7 and 8 containdetails of the castes of these zamindars, and theirtroops including their horsemen (sawar), foot-soldiers(piyada) and elephants (fil ). The mulk-abadi gives afascinating, detailed and highly complex view ofagrarian society in northern India. The fourth andfifth books (daftars) deal with the religious, literaryand cultural traditions of the people of India and alsocontain a collection of Akbar’s “auspicious sayings”.

Fig. 8.14Abu’l Fazl presenting themanuscript of the completedAkbar Nama to his patron

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Source 9

“Moistening the rose garden of fortune”

In this extract Abu’l Fazl gives a vivid account of how and from whom hecollected his information:

... to Abu’l Fazl, son of Mubarak … this sublime mandate was given.“Write with the pen of sincerity the account of the glorious eventsand of our dominion-conquering victories … Assuredly, I spent muchlabour and research in collecting the records and narratives of HisMajesty’s actions and I was a long time interrogating the servants ofthe State and the old members of the illustrious family. I examinedboth prudent, truth-speaking old men and active-minded, right-actioned young ones and reduced their statements to writing. TheRoyal commands were issued to the provinces, that those who fromold service remembered, with certainty or with adminicle of doubt,the events of the past, should copy out the notes and memorandaand transit them to the court. (Then) a second command shone forthfrom the holy Presence-chamber; to wit – that the materials whichhad been collected should be ... recited in the royal hearing, andwhatever might have to be written down afterwards, should beintroduced into the noble volume as a supplement, and that suchdetails as on account of the minuteness of the inquiries and theminutae of affairs, (which) could not then be brought to an end,should be inserted afterwards at my leisure.

Being relieved by this royal order – the interpreter of the Divineordinance – from the secret anxiety of my heart, I proceeded toreduce into writing the rough draughts (drafts)which were void ofthe grace of arrangement and style. I obtained the chronicle ofevents beginning at the Nineteenth Year of the Divine Era, whenthe Record Office was established by the enlightened intellect ofHis Majesty, and from its rich pages, I gathered the accounts ofmany events. Great pains too, were taken to procure the originalsor copies of most of the orders which had been issued to theprovinces from the Accession up to the present-day … I also tookmuch trouble to incorporate many of the reports which ministersand high officials had submitted, about the affairs of the empireand the events of foreign countries. And my labour-loving soulwas satiated by the apparatus of inquiry and research. I also exertedmyself energetically to collect the rough notes and memoranda ofsagacious and well-informed men. By these means, I constructed areservoir for irrigating and moistening the rose garden of fortune(the Akbar Nama).

List all the sources that Abu’l Fazl used to compile hiswork. Which of these sources would have been most usefulfor arriving at an understanding of agrarian relations?To what extent do you think his work would have beeninfluenced by his relationship with Akbar?



Although the Ain was officially sponsored to recorddetailed information to facilitate Emperor Akbargovern his empire, it was much more than areproduction of official papers. That the manuscriptwas revised five times by the author would suggesta high degree of caution on the part of Abu’l Fazland a search for authenticity. For instance, oraltestimonies were cross-checked and verified beforebeing incorporated as “facts” in the chronicle. Inthe quantitative sections, all numeric data werereproduced in words so as to minimise the chancesof subsequent transcriptional errors.

Historians who have carefully studied the Ain pointout that it is not without its problems. Numerouserrors in totalling have been detected. These areascribed to simple slips of arithmetic or oftranscription by Abu’l Fazl’s assistants. These aregenerally minor and do not detract from the overallquantitative veracity of the manuals.

Another limitation of the Ain is the somewhatskewed nature of the quantitative data. Data werenot collected uniformly from all provinces. Forinstance, while for many subas detailed informationwas compiled about the caste composition of thezamindars, such information is not available forBengal and Orissa. Further, while the fiscal datafrom the subas is remarkable for its richness, someequally vital parameters such as prices and wagesfrom these same areas are not as well documented.The detailed list of prices and wages that the Aindoes provide is mainly derived from data pertainingto areas in or around the imperial capital of Agra,and is therefore of limited relevance for the rest ofthe country.

These limitations notwithstanding, the Ain remainsan extraordinary document of its times. By providingfascinating glimpses into the structure andorganisation of the Mughal Empire and by giving usquantitative information about its products andpeople, Abu’l Fazl achieved a major breakthroughin the tradition of medieval chroniclers who wrotemostly about remarkable political events – wars,conquests, political machinations, and dynasticturmoil. Information about the country, its people

Translating the AinGiven the importance of the Ain,it has been translated for use bya number of scholars. HenryBlochmann edited it and theAsiatic Society of Bengal,Calcutta (present-day Kolkata),published it in its BibliothecaIndica series. The book hasalso been translated into Englishin three volumes. The standardtranslation of Volume 1 is thatof Henry Blochmann (Calcutta1873). The other two volumeswere translated by H.S. Jarrett(Calcutta 1891 and 1894).

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and its products was mentioned only incidentallyand as embellishments to the essentially politicalthrust of the narrative.

The Ain completely departed from this tradition asit recorded information about the empire and the peopleof India, and thus constitutes a benchmark forstudying India at the turn of the seventeenth century.The value of the Ain’s quantitative evidence isuncontested where the study of agrarian relationsis concerned. But it is the information it contains onpeople, their professions and trades and on theimperial establishment and the grandees of the empirewhich enables historians to reconstruct the socialfabric of India at that time.


TimelineLandmarks in the History of the Mughal Empire

1526 Babur defeats Ibrahim Lodi, the Delhi Sultan,at Panipat, becomes the first Mughal emperor

1530-40 First phase of Humayun’s reign

1540-55 Humayun defeated by Sher Shah,in exile at the Safavid court

1555-56 Humayun regains lost territories

1556-1605 Reign of Akbar

1605-27 Reign of Jahangir

1628-58 Reign of Shah Jahan

1658-1707 Reign of Aurangzeb

1739 Nadir Shah invades India and sacks Delhi

1761 Ahmad Shah Abdali defeats the Marathasin the third battle of Panipat

1765 The diwani of Bengal transferred to theEast India Company

1857 Last Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah II,deposed by the British and exiled to Rangoon(present day Yangon, Myanmar)


Answer in100-150 words

1. What are the problems in using the Ain as a source forreconstructing agrarian history? How do historians dealwith this situation?

2. To what extent is it possible to characterise agriculturalproduction in the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries assubsistence agriculture? Give reasons for your answer.

3. Describe the role played by women in agriculturalproduction.

4. Discuss, with examples, the significance of monetarytransactions during the period under consideration.

5. Examine the evidence that suggests that land revenuewas important for the Mughal fiscal system.

Write a short essay (about250-300 words) on the following:

6. To what extent do you think caste was a factor ininfluencing social and economic relations in agrariansociety?

7. How were the lives of forest dwellers transformed in thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries?

8. Examine the role played by zamindars in Mughal India.

9. Discuss the ways in which panchayats and villageheadmen regulated rural society.

Fig. 8.15A seventeenth-century paintingdepicting jewellers

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Sumit Guha. 1999.Environment and Ethnicityin India.Cambridge University Press,Cambridge.

Irfan Habib. 1999.The Agrarian System of MughalIndia 1556-1707 (Second edition).Oxford University Press,New Delhi.

W.H. Moreland. 1983 (rpt).India at the Death of Akbar:An Economic Study.Oriental, New Delhi.

Tapan Raychaudhuri andIrfan Habib (eds). 2004.The Cambridge EconomicHistory of India. Vol.1.Orient Longman, New Delhi.

Dietmar Rothermund. 1993.An Economic History of India –from Pre-colonial Times to 1991.Routledge, London.

Sanjay Subrahmanyam (ed.).1994.Money and the Market in India,1100-1700.Oxford University Press,New Delhi.

Map work

10. On an outline map of the world, mark the areaswhich had economic links with the Mughal Empire,and trace out possible routes of communication.

Project (choose one)

11. Visit a neighbouring village. Find out how manypeople live there, which crops are grown, whichanimals are raised, which artisanal groups residethere, whether women own land, how the localpanchayat functions. Compare this informationwith what you have learnt about the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries, noting similarities anddifferences. Explain both the changes and thecontinuities that you find.

12. Select a small section of the Ain (10-12 pages,available online at the website indicated below).Read it carefully and prepare a report on how itcan be used by a historian.

If you would like to knowmore, read:

For more information,you could visit:http://persian.packhum.orgpersianindex.jsp?serv=pf&file=00702053&ct=0


Fig. 8.16A painting depicting a woman selling sweets