Which of the following terms were used in the Indo-Persian sources of the Mughal period to denote a peasant? 1. Raiyat 2. Asami 3. Muzarian 4. Majur Select the correct answer using the code given below:
- (a)1 and 2 only
- (b)2 and 3 only
- (c)1, 2 and 3 only
- (d)1, 3 and 4 only
Correct — C, 1, 2 and 3 only. The stem is lifted almost word for word from the NCERT treatment of Mughal agrarian society, which says that the term Indo-Persian sources of the Mughal period most frequently used to denote a peasant was raiyat, in the plural riaya, or muzarian, and that we also encounter the terms kisan and asami. That is items 1, 2 and 3 exactly. Majur, item 4, names a different person doing a different thing: it is the hired labourer who works for a wage on somebody else's field or in a workshop, and the whole force of the Mughal vocabulary is that a peasant held and worked land of his own while a majur did not. The seventeenth-century sources split the peasantry further still, into khud-kashta, cultivators resident in the village where their land lay, and pahi-kashta, non-resident cultivators who came in from another village to till on contract. Neither category is a wage worker, and none of the four peasant words in this question is.
- (a)1 and 2 only — Stops at raiyat and asami and leaves out muzarian, which is in fact one of the two commonest words in the Persian revenue records, standing beside raiyat rather than behind it.
- (b)2 and 3 only — Drops raiyat, the single most frequent term of all, and the one that survives into the colonial vocabulary as ryot — as in ryotwari, and in the ryots of the Deccan riots.
- (d)1, 3 and 4 only — Keeps majur, which is the wage labourer's word and cognate with the modern mazdoor, and throws out asami, which the sources do use for a peasant. The list is right on three counts and wrong on the one it swaps in.
The basic unit of Mughal agrarian society was the village of peasant households, each holding land it cultivated with its own oxen and equipment. Above the peasant sat the zamindar, who held a superior right over the produce of the land without cultivating it, and above him the revenue claim of the state, assessed and largely collected in cash. Because revenue was demanded in cash, cultivators were pushed toward crops that sold well — cotton, sugarcane, indigo, later tobacco and maize — which the sources call jins-i-kamil, the perfect crops.
This is a vocabulary question dressed as a history question, and the shortest route through it is to notice that one of the four words is not about land at all. Majur belongs with mazdoor, the word for wage work that is still in daily use; the other three are all words for the person who holds and tills. Once item 4 goes, only option (c) survives, since every other option either contains 4 or drops one of the three genuine terms. Keep the English descendant of raiyat in mind too — ryot — because the same word carries into the ryotwari settlement of the Madras and Bombay presidencies and into the accounts of nineteenth-century peasant revolts.
- NCERT, Themes in Indian History Part II: Indo-Persian sources of the Mughal period most frequently used raiyat (plural riaya) or muzarian for a peasant, and also used kisan and asami.
- Majur means a hired labourer paid a wage, not a landholding cultivator.
- Seventeenth-century sources distinguish khud-kashta, resident cultivators of the village, from pahi-kashta, non-resident cultivators who came in from elsewhere.
- Mughal land revenue was assessed and largely collected in cash, which pushed cultivators toward marketable crops called jins-i-kamil.
- Raiyat is the ancestor of the colonial-era ryot, and of the name of the ryotwari settlement.
Three of the four listed words describe a landholder; the fourth describes someone paid by the day.
- Reading majur as a peasant word because it appears in the same records; it is the wage labourer's word.
- Treating khud-kashta and pahi-kashta as social ranks; the distinction is residence, not status.
- Assuming zamindar means landowner in the modern sense; the Mughal zamindar held a superior claim on produce, not title to the soil.
As a terminology check like this one, or as a difference-between item pairing jagirdar with zamindar, or khud-kashta with pahi-kashta.
With reference to Mughal India, what is/are the difference/differences between Jagirdar and Zamindar? 1. Jagirdars were holders of land assignments in lieu of judicial and police duties, whereas Zamindars were holders of revenue rights without obligation to perform any duty other than revenue collection. 2. Land assignments to Jagirdars were hereditary and revenue rights of Zamindars were not hereditary.
- (a) 1 only
- (b) 2 only
- (c) Both 1 and 2
- (d) Neither 1 nor 2
Answer(d) Neither 1 nor 2
The layer immediately above the peasant, tested with the same precision about words. Jagir assignments were transferable and generally not hereditary, while zamindari claims often were — the reverse of what that item asserts, and a useful check on any answer that treats the two as interchangeable.
- practice — not a real PYQ
In Mughal-period sources, khud-kashta and pahi-kashta refer to two kinds of
- (a)revenue officials
- (b)peasants
- (c)military commanders
- (d)village artisans
Answer(b) peasants — khud-kashta cultivators lived in the village where their land lay, pahi-kashta cultivators came in from another village.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The term jins-i-kamil in Mughal agrarian history refers to
- (a)crops that fetched a high price in the market
- (b)land assigned to a military commander
- (c)the village headman's share of the harvest
- (d)a category of tax-free land grant
Answer(a) crops that fetched a high price in the market — cotton, sugarcane and indigo among them, grown because revenue had to be paid in cash.