The agrarian relations the ain-i-akbari all objective questions
Answers
Our major source forthe agrarian history of the sixteenth and earlyseventeenth centuries are chronicles and documentsfrom the Mughal court.
2. One of the most important chronicles was theAin-i Akbari authored by Akbar’s court historian Abu’lFazl. 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.
3. The detailed revenue records fromGujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan dating fromthe 17th and 18thcenturies.
4. Further,the extensive records of the East India Company provide us with useful descriptionsof agrarian relations in eastern India.
5. All thesesources record instances of conflicts between peasants, zamindars and the state. In the processthey give us an insight into peasants’ perception ofand their expectations of fairness from the state.
Different terms used for describing peasants
1. The term which Indo-Persian sources of the Mughalperiod most frequently used to denote a peasant was raiyat or muzarian.
2. In addition, wealso encounter the terms kisan or asami.
3. Sources ofthe seventeenth century refer to two kinds of peasants – khud-kashta and pahi-kashta.
4. The khud-kashta were residents of the village in which they held theirlands.
5. The pahi-kashta were non-resident cultivators who belonged to some other village, but cultivated landselsewhere on a contractual basis.
6. People became pahi-kashta either out of choice or out of compulsion.Whenterms of revenue in a distant village were more favourable peasants moved to other villages.
7. Sometimes they were forced by economic distress after a famine.
Property and land of peasants
1. Average peasant of north Indiapossessed a pair of bulls and one plough and others possessed two pairs of bulls and two ploughs.; most possessed even less.
2. In Gujaratpeasants possessing about six acres of land wereconsidered to be affluent; in Bengal, five acres was the upper limit of an averagepeasant farm
Irrigation used by peasants
1. The three factors thataccounted for the constant expansion of agriculture were the abundance of land, available labour and the mobility of peasants.
2. Since the primary purpose of agriculture is to feedpeople, basic staples such as rice, wheat or milletswere the most frequently cultivated crops.
3. 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.
4. In northern India the state undertookdigging of new canals and also repairedold ones like the shahnahr in the Punjab during Shah Jahan’s reign.
Technology used by peasants
1. Though agriculture was labour intensive, peasants did use technologies that often harnessed cattleenergy.
2. One example was the wooden plough, whichwas light and easily assembled with an iron tip orcoulter.
3. A drill, pulled by a pair of giant oxen,was used to plant seeds, but broadcasting ofseed was the most prevalent method.
4. Hoeing andweeding were done simultaneously using a narrowiron blade with a small wooden handle.
Crops and cropping seasons
1. Agriculture was organised around two major seasonal cycles, the kharif and the rabi. This would mean that most regionsproduced a minimum of two crops ayear whereas some, where rainfall orirrigation assured a continuous supply of water, evengave three crops.
2. In the Mughal provinces of Agra produced 39 varietiesof crops and Delhi produced 43 over the two seasons.Bengal produced 50 varieties of rice alone.
3. However, the focus on the cultivation was basicstaples such as rice, wheat, pulses and vegetables etc. The Mughal state also encouraged peasantsto cultivate cash crops such as cotton,oilseeds and sugarcane which brought morerevenue.
4. During the seventeenth century several new cropsfrom different parts of the world reached the Indiansubcontinent. Maize (makka), for example, was introduced into India via Africa and Spain and bythe seventeenth century it was being listed as oneof the major crops of western India.
5. Vegetables like tomatoes, potatoes and chillies were introduced from the New World at this time, as were fruits like thepineapple and the papaya