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LECTURE
II.

Attempted changes.

54

SUBSEQUENT ATTEMPTS AT CHANGE.

with any reference to the wuzeefa khiraj as a model to be preferred to the mookasumah khiraj; or that it was with a view to imposing the khiraj at all: the sufficient reason given for the change being that the new mode was less burdensome to the cultivator. A step in the same direction had been taken by the predecessors of Akbar, Shere Shah and Selim Shah, who abolished, or rather sought to abolish, the practice of dividing the crops.2

The tax which the Mahomedans found existing in India was analogous to the mookasumah form of the khiraj; since it was levied by a division of the actual produce; the system called buttai in Hindoo times. Both the name and the mode of division have come down to the present day; none of the various attempts that have been made to substitute a fixed rate for a division of the produce have completely succeeded. The first change which was attempted on a considerable scale appears to have been that of Alaood-deen, who began to reign in A.D. 1296 and died in 1316. He attempted, what his predecessors had probably been struggling towards, the exaction of the full half of the gross produce from the cultivators:-the highest proportion which could lawfully be demanded, even from a conquered country. He endeavoured to make various changes in the revenue system, and particularly to abolish the buttai system. He directed that the revenue should be a fixed rate assessed upon measurement, instead of a proportion of the produce; which, if carried out, would have been an anticipation of Akbar's reform. But it is said that these

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3 Patton's Asiatic Monarchies, 88, 89. Baillie's Land Tax, xxviii.

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LECTURE

II.

regulations came to an end after Ala-ood-deen's death; and the cultivators continued to render the revenue according to the old buttai system. Ala-ood-deen may have had an eye to the khiraj in the rate he endeavoured to impose, and the mode in which he sought to levy it: but it can hardly be said that he imposed, or perhaps that he intended formally to impose, the wuzeefa khiraj ; still less that he intended to give effect to the Mahomedan theory that the payment of wuzeefa khiraj gave the cultivator an exclusive proprietary right in the land. We cannot ascertain how far the Mahomedans who settled in India were disposed to carry this theory into practice, or whether it had ever been carried into practice. The theory itself is, to a great extent, an inference only, if it is extended further than the obvious result that when the State ceases to take a share of the produce, and takes instead a fixed rate from the cultivator personally, and accepts his personal liability instead of retaining its hold upon the crop, the cultivator becomes the exclusive proprietor of the crop; and as he cannot be ousted from his holding, at any rate so long as he pays the khiraj, he is to that extent exclusive proprietor of the land. But I cannot find that either Proprietary rights not Ala-ood-deen or Akbar intended to introduce any change disturbed. in the proprietary rights of the cultivators; the bulk of whom had indeed rights similar to those which would belong to wuzeefa khiraj holders. Nor can I find that, before the time of Ala-ood-deen, or while the tax resembled the mookasumah khiraj, the State claimed to interfere with the proprietary rights of the cultivators, or claimed itself the right of property. The course of things seems to have Baillie's Land Tax, xxviii.

2 Baillie's Land Tax, xxii, xxx, xxxiii.

LECTURE

II.

Proprietary

rights gradually affected by

the Mahomedan system.

56

PROPRIETARY RIGHTS GRADUALLY AFFECTED.

been, on the contrary, that in the early times of the con-
quest the position of the cultivator was very little modified;
and that the new Government was content to go on upon the
same footing as the native Governments with regard to the
revenue; but that when the invaders had become firmly
settled, they endeavoured to diminish rather than increase
the cultivator's rights by raising the amount of assessment;
although they endeavoured also to introduce a system
which would, as they considered, make the collection of
the revenue less burdensome. They succeeded completely
in raising the amount, but never succeeded completely
in introducing the intended improvements.
And we
cannot find sufficient ground for saying that they ever
intended to transfer the proprietary right from the State to
the cultivator, even if the State had ever claimed any
larger right against the cultivator than had descended to it
from Hindoo times. However, even if it could be affirmed
with certainty that, after the attempted changes by Ala-
ood-deen, and the more effectual reforms of Akbar, the
cultivator was considered to have received a complete
transfer of the proprietary rights of the State, we should
still be left in uncertainty as to the extent of the proprietary
right thus transferred: since, probably from lack of occasion,
questions had apparently not arisen, or at any rate we have
no record of such, as to any greater right than the right to
cultivate and occupy on the one hand, and the right to
receive a portion of the produce or its equivalent on the
other. The nature of the tax imposed by the Mahomedans,
and the mode of levying it do not appear therefore to
affect very materially the nature of the rights in the land.
These rights came in process of time to be more affected by
the machinery employed in the collection than by Maho-

THE FISCAL MACHINERY.

57 medan theories as to the land. Hindoo custom appears to have held its own against Mahomedan theory; but to have succumbed in a great measure before the rude shocks of Mahomedan practice and the rapacity of conquerors.

LECTURE

II.

The machinery for collecting the revenue indeed long The revenue machinery. continued the same. From motives of policy and convenience, such as afterwards influenced the English, the conquerors, as I have said, were content to realise the revenue in the ancient way, and through the established agencies.'

We have very little information as to this period, which The headman. was one of change and confusion; but we may conjecture that, when the revenue was allowed to flow through the ancient channels, the headman would, where village communities were in their vigour, continue to collect the State share of the produce. The rajah, to whom he was in the habit of paying the revenue, would either have become tributary, retaining his possessions and receiving the revenue as before; or would have become a superior collector of the revenue, receiving it from the headman, and making himself responsible for it to the State; or he might be displaced altogether, and take no part in the new system. When however the former rajah was placed in the position of a superior collector of revenue from a conquered district which he had once ruled, it is obvious that there would be a great tendency to depress the headman, and to change the ancient rajah into the zemindar of Mahomedan times. It would be natural that the Mahomedans should not only collect the revenue upon the old footing, and through the old channels, but should also

1 Patton's Asiatic Monarchies, 162. Land Tenure by a Civilian, 32. Fifth Report, Vol. I, 17; Vol. II, 169. Harington's Analysis, Vol. II, 239. h

LECTURE

II.

The origin of the zemindar.

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willingly accept the responsibility of any of the prominent persons of the Hindoo system, and especially of the rajahs. And when they were able to obtain the security of the rajah's responsibility, it would be natural that an alien race, who had been obliged to adopt a system, of the details of which they were to a great extent ignorant, should at first grow to ignore more and more the agencies below the influential persons with whom they had contracted, and to look to them alone. The relation of the parties would, at the beginning, tend to take the form of an undertaking by the collecting party that the revenue should be duly rendered. The chief collector would thus stand in a position from which the new Government could not easily remove him without being prepared to take the collection into their own hands, through officers of their own choosing, and detached from the old system. We shall see that they attempted at a later period to do this. On the other hand, the collector of revenue, whether an ancient rajah, a farmer of revenue, or a village headman, was, in his relation to the Government, only an officer. The headman had always occupied this position in relation to the State, and so had the farmer: but the rajah, who had been accustomed by hereditary right to receive the revenue for his own benefit, would tend to assert a proprietary right to which the others could not lay claim; although the headman had always had an hereditary, and the farmer sometimes an official, interest in the revenue. The rajah would therefore tend to absorb the proprietary rights, and to depress the headman, and weaken the influence of the village community. On the other hand, a struggle would begin between the principles of the two systems, both represented by the rajah or other powerful person. Such a person, as the chief collector of

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