Irfan Habib

The Peasant in Indian History
Author(s): Irfan Habib

Source: Social Scientist , Mar., 1983, Vol. 11, No. 3, Marx Centenary Number (Mar.,
1983), pp. 21-64
Published by: Social Scientist
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3516915
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IRFAN HABIBF
The Peasant in Indian History
THE MOMENTOUS events of this century have led to a world-wide

recognition that peasants, who constitute the largest single segment
of mankind, may have a special part to play in shaping our destinies.
In interpreting the historical qualities of the peasantry, Chayanov
aud Mao Zedong oWer two widely different, even opposite, outlooks.
Yet both of them have inspired renewed explorations into the past of
the peasantry with a view to discovering its capacities of resistance
and change.
In India an endeavour began for reconstructing the history of
the peasants as a pre-condition for identifying the n:sain historical
periods and processes: D D Kosambi and R S Sharma, together
with Danlel Thorner, brought the peasants into the study of Indian
historyfor tlle first time. In what follows the debt to these and
other seholars for knowledtge as well as inspitation would be obvious.
A rigorous definition of the peasant is desirable, though it is
naturally elusive. T take the peasant to mean a person who under-
takes agriculture on his own, working with his own implements and
using the labollr of his family. This defin;tson, which would be
acceptable to Marxists as well as to Chayanov insofar as it goes,
omits any consideration of the extent of the use of hired labour and
control over land. The moment these are consielered, the peasants
seem to fall apart into different strata. Thus, for example, the
Marxists would distinguish the rich peasant (witll extensive use of
hired labour), the middle peasant (mainly using family labour) and
the poor peasant (witll land insufficient to absorb the whole of family
labour). But this distinction is accompanied by yet another, based
oll property relatiolls. We can then recognise the peasant-proprietor,
the peasant with some claim to permanent or long-term occupancy;
and the seasonal share-cropper, as separate categories. These do
not (and need not) directly coincide with the three mentioned earlier,
though in practice many poor peasants, and very few rich peasants
are share-croppers. There is then the distinction by 'wealth' alone:
vProfessor of History, Aligarll Muslim University, and President of the Indian

History Congress at its forty-third session at Kurukshetra, 1982.

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SOCIAL SCIENTIST
Ownership
22 of more expensive and productive devices, better cattle,
more fertile land. This again may partly overlap the other
classifications. The 'stratification' that we would be meeting with
can be viewed in the context of all these three criteria, and mt will be
noticed that I would be ussng evidence of any of the three kinds of
classifications to establish differentiation within the peasantry.
While landless labourers are not peasants, they form woth the
peasants the working agricultural population, and their history too
(which in many ways has been different from that of the peasants)
remains for me a part of peasant history.
Fislally, any study of the peasants must ,involve an enquiry into
how they pay rent or surrender their surplus. This necessitates the
shifting of the focus, from tinle to time, from the exploited to the
exploiters. But without seeing the peasants in their actual relation
with the exploiting classes there can be no peasant history, the
relatiorlship is crucial.
The Origins: The Indus Basin

The stage at which peasants originate wthin a society must
naturally arrive only after the pursuit of agriculture is established as
a major provider of food. A family can then spend the larger part
of its labour-time on the cultivation of plants and the harvesting of
the seed. In this process not only do the food-gatherers (mainly
hunters) tu1n into producers; the monogamistic family itself evolves
as a basic unit of social organisation,
When platlt seeds are gathered in the wild, there is of course
no agriculture. Mesolithic communities like those of Chopni Mando
(in the valley of the Belan, a tributary of the Son) among the
Vindhyan foot-hills, whe consllmed wild rice, lzelong to the pre-history
of agriculture. Domesticated plants came with the Neolithic
Revolution; and two zones where crops were raise(l have been
identified withln tlle India of the pre-1947 frontiers. The first is in
the Belan valley itself (Kodihwa and Mahagara) wllere grains of
cultivated rice and bones of domezticated "cattles' and "sheep-goat"
have been found with the period B. C. 6500 to 4500. The second
zone is that of tlae Kachhi plain south of the Bolan Pass an arid
area but expericnci1zg seasonal Roods from hill torrents. Here at
Mehrgarh (6th to 3rd millenniun1 BC) have been found remains of
barley (two-row as well as six-row) and wheat of three varieties
(corn-wheat, emmer and breadwheat). The lowest levels give bones
of wild animals only; but {l1e top two metres yield those of domestic
cattle, sheep and goats.1
1 For the information used in this paragraph, I have relied on my colleague

Dr. M D N Sahi's paper "Early History of Agriculture in Pre and Proto-
historic India", read at the Indian lSistory Congress, Bodhgaya, 1981
(cyclostyled).

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THE PEASANT IN INDIAN HISTORY 23
The domestication of plants and, possibly later, that of cattle,

marked a notable stage in human progress; but the full-blooded
agricultural revolution was yet to come; the draught potential of
cattle was still unexploited, and there was no trace of the plough,
which alone could assure a substantaal seed:yield ratio. Moreover,
given the paucity of the crops cultivated, there could only be one
cropping season, 'kharif' in the Belan valley and 'rabi' in the Kachhi
plain. The cultivated tracts were in any case very restricted, since
there were no means of clearing the dense forests and making land
there fit for cultivation. lt is difficult to conjecture what the
antelual structure of these crop-raising communities was like;
cultivation might still be a continuatioIl cuf foodSgathering with
women as the "principals", as Gordon Childe had thought.2 Men had
to hunt and later on, also tend catt le for meat and mi Ik. The
'sexual' division of lalsour was not sufficient to produce a surplus
which could create any class division or even occupational
stratification. In a much more advanced hoe-using Neolithic
community of Anatolia (6th nsillennium BC) W A Fairservice, Jr,
finds evidence of social "equalitarianism",3 and this should have
been even more true of the Indian communities.
In India the agricultural revolutoon and the first urban
revolution in fact coincide in the Indus (Harappan) civilisation,
which calibrated carbon dating now places vithin BC 2600-1800.4
The fabric of Indus agriculture rested undoubtedly on plough
cultivation. Since the ox had already been converted into a draught
animal for pulling the bullock cart, the case for the Indus people
using a plough should have been an unanswerable one in spite of
Kosambi's strong objections.S The discovery of tlae furrows of a
2 V Gordon Childe, Mast AIakes Himself, London, 1948, p 123.

3 The T>lresAtold of Civilization, New York, 1975, pp 40 fT. Not all the evidance,
specially SUCll as inlerences fronl axt, can bc beyond dispute.
4 Thc simple carbon dates (based on half-life vf 5730 ye.lrs) are given in
Bridget and Raymond Allchin, The Birt,lt of lndiasl CilZilz-atiozt, Pcnguin Boolss,
1968, p 140; and there are useful disctlssions in D P Agarvval and A Ghosh
(ed), Radlo-carbozl n11d Isldiasl ArcAlaeology, Bombay, 1973, pp 20S^21(), and in
Puratattla, No 7 (1914), pp 65-73. Calibration llas resultsd brl pttshing back
the lower date of thP 11zdus culture and considerably lengthening its span.
S For the toy clay wheeled carts and bronze oxen found at the lndus sitAs sec,
Stuart Piggott, Pre-Alistoric Iztdifz, Pengusn Booles} 1950, pp 176-17 7. The
humped ox ( elull) of the I1ldtls ctlltllre was t!articlllarly stlitbd for traclion:
the hump made possilule stlch an efTective harness. Kosambi's objections
(An Ieltroductiosl to the Stcedy of Ietdicvel Hislory, Bomleay. 1956, pp 63-67) were
grounded on the lack of positive evidence for the plough, and a conjeetuled
small size of surpllls Owillg to the presencc of only two citie.</ in colltrast to
Mesopotam1a. There are some comments on tllc negativr evidence in D H
Gordon. The PreXlistoric Backgrollfld of I1ldiczft CllltlareX I$omlay, 2nd cd., 1960,
pp 70-71

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24 SOC1A L SCIENTIST
'ploughed field' at Kalibangan has now met the doubts over the
absence of any positive evidence.6 The plough explaans the really
large extent of Indus agriculture, covering the north-western plains
and extending into Gujarat. The Indus people raised wheat and
barley (six-row), both of standard modern Indian varieties; in the
Indus sites in Gujarat, rice has been found along with the bajra
millet. The field pea represents pulses; and sesamuln and a species of
brassica, the oilseeds.7 The most remarkable of the Indus crops is
cotton which ushers in the'industrial' crops.8 The multiplicity of
crops shows that the two-harvest system was now firmly established;
agriculture would henceforth be a full-time occupation; and the
presence of a petlsantry as a social class must therefore be inferred.
But the very moment of the emergence of a peasantry is
apparently also that of the emergence of a differentiated society.
There SCtillS to be no basis for the belief tllat there could ever have
boen a pure peasant society for any period, long or shortS such as
Burton Stein 11ypotllesises for South India in another chronological
epocll.9 Full-fledged agriculture meant creation of surplus enough to
feed a certain number of food producers. In the arid zone in which
slgriculture had to spread first, dykes and embankments to hold
and divert flood waters were a pre-requisite; and these demand a
certain alnount of social and administrative organisation-the bed-
rock of N4arx's Oriental Despotism.10 Finally, the control over bronze
(alloy of copper and tin), an expensive metal, could give a small town-
based class an effective sway over a mass of stone-tool using pea-
santry.1t Cementing tl e structure created by these material circum-
stances was a religion of gods, superstitions and priests, which
apparenlly bound the rulers and the ruled alike ln an awesome dread of
change, giving to the Indus culture its characteristic dull uniformity in
( Indiafl ArcAlaeology 1968-69-a Review, New Delhi, 1971, pp 29-30, and Plate
XXXI v . The ploughed field i s described as 'pre-Harappalus silice it i s covered
by Harappan occupation strata
7 For wheat and barley, John Marshall, Mohenjodaro asld the Indlls Civilization,
London, t931, pp 586-587. G Watt says of tl e six-row barley that it is "almost
the only cultivated form (of barle)Z) in India" (Economic ProductsofIndia,
l ondon, 1890, IV, p 275). The hordum vuZgare and hexatichllm are identical
varicties (but cf S Piggott, Prehistoric Isldia, p 153). For other information on
the crops, see Piggot t, op cit., and Sahi, 'Early agri cul ture'. . ., op cit.
8 Marshall, AfoheoJ;odaro ancl the *ndus Civilizaton, I, pp 31-32. The variety of
cotto;l was fotliAd to ba "closely related" to gossypillm arboreum and thus
confirmed a findillg, already made on botanical grotinds, that this variety was
"quite all ancient iS not mOI't ancient than any other cotton" (G Watt,
Costlsalercin1Prod.lets of India, London, 1908, p 577.)
9 Peasant Stzlte and Society in Medieval South India, Delhi, 1 980.
l0 The classical statement is in Marx, 'The British Rule in I1ldia' (1853),
reprinted in K Maix and F Engels, 0Z1 ColozzEalisl, MOSCOW, I1 d., p 33.
11 CfVGordonChilde, FF/latha,npenelinHistor), Penguin Books, revised ed.,
1954,p 132.

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12 D 1:) Kosambi, Isztro/c tivel . . . . . . . , p 59-61. He pos ibly overstates thc role of
THE PEASANT 1N INDIAN HISTORY 2s
geographical terms as well as over time.l2

Thv I1ldus culture then not only gave India its first cities in
Harappa and Mohenjodaro, but aIso its lirst peacantry. The towns
were todisappear with the fall of that culture; but what of 2he
peasants? A 'flood' theory can explain the abandonment of a town or
two; it cannot surely postulate the submergence of whole agricultural
communities. There has therefore not been any valid or persuasive
alternative to the hypothesis first boldty set forth by Wheeler in 1947,
which was relnforced by Kosambi in 1956 through a brilliant interpre-
tation of the Rigvedic llymns.13 This saw the Aryslns as directly
succeeding the [ndus culture, whose authers they destroyed or subju-
gated. 14
The success of the Aryas is ascribed to tlle possesson of the
horse, and, still more, the horse-drawn chariot.l5 Since compared
witla all previous armour and weaponry the chariot WtIS an immensely
expensive machine, its possession implied a pre-existing aristocracy;l6
it is therefore difficult to envision an early egalitarian stage within
the Rigvedic scociety as has sometames been suagested.l7
The state of agriculture glimpsed through the Ri:,vela shows the
continuance of the ox-drawn plough (sira).l8 The tecllnology was still
chalcolitllic al(l the Ri;,vedic rlyasa is generally thought to mean
copper, not iron Barley (yav) is the chief foodgrain; but rice seems
to have begun to be cultivated in the upper Indus basin ('Saptasin-
dhavah') so that the two-crop annual cycle survived in a new form. But
religion hen he argues that force (tllrotlgh bronze ue.uponry) was rendercd
superiltlotis by the soliditying role of religion (p 59).
13 R E M Wliceler, "Harapra 194G, tile Vefences and Ceri>tely 38", Aszeiezltltldia,
No 3, January, 1947, pp 78-8R; D l) Kosanibi, JlzfrovfilPtiosl..., pp 66-93.
14 One sllotild always use the word "Aryan" with tllc rcscrvations which
Romila Thapar has so cogently urged in her Pleswdential Address to the
Ancient India SCCtiOIl Of the lndian History Coligress, Proccedis1gs of the
Congrcss, Yaranasi session (1969), Pl) IS-46. Thcre ccan alesolutely be no
racial elements involved in it.
15 On the abse;lce of the horse in the Tndils culture sec Bridget and Raymosid
Allclltn, BirtXl of Indian C:ivilizatios1, p 260. lhe Aran sticcess seems to
parallel thcat of til: H)ksos allo ovcrran Egypt vith thWir chariots in the 18lh
century B C.
16 Cf Leonard Wooli ey, TXte BegiBlz7ielo of Civili7cltion (USESCO History of Man-

kind, 161, l Pclrt 2), London, IQ65, p 190. The point is lightly touched upon
by Sara Daman Sitlgh, Anc.cllt Idisll warfare, WitAt special reference to tAle
Vedic )eriocl, Leiden, 1965, p 31, but is specially noted by Sir MortimWr
Wheeler in his foreword to the book.
17 R S Sharma, Sllras isl A;fcieslt India, IDelhi, 1958, p 26; scv also his article
"Conflict, L)ifferelitiation and Distribution in Rvdic Societys', 1Z1.zZicun
Hiztorico21 Revielv, 1 V (I ), p p 1- 1 2.
18 B S Ei 1)as, Ec0/1o)7zic Hi.StorA of Anciellt India, Calcutta, 1937, ptl 28-29.

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26 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
saheat cotton and other crops of the Indus culture are not mentaoned.l9
Moreover, the Aryans seems to have regarded with scorn the dyke-
based agriculture of their enemies: Indra would force open the dams
that imprisoned the water.20 It is possible that the change in agricul-
tural conditions was linked to the disappearance of the cities with
their marlcets and the supplantingof one structure of control by a
completely different one. Pastoralism seems to have become more
importallt, for the Aryans coveted weatth chiefly in the form of cows,
horses and camels, along with slaves.21
Whatever tlle mechanism of control, the surplus stell came from
the peasants. These formed the mass of the community, the utis, for
the words for 'cultivators', kristi and charsani, were often employed
for the Aryan folk as a whole.22 The peasants were masters ot their
own felds (ksetrc7pati).23 But such 'free' peasants belonged to the
superior tribes: a larger population would seem to h;ve comprised
the subjugated lasyu commun1ties compelled to part with grain .Ind
kine.24 In thz lowest levels were the dasas working like 'cattlW',
presumably on the field, or tending the herds, for their masters.25 At
the apex were the aristocracy (BajaMyas) proudly driving in their
chariots with Jndra as their model, and the priests (brnlzzwlzlas) who
presided over animal sacrifices and a complex ritual. A celebrated
hymn in Book x of the Rigtteda offers a picture of t!lis ctass-clivided
society whose creation the hymn seeks to ascribe to divinity. Hovever
simplified, the varna scheme of the hymn seems to reflect faithflllly the
deep division of the peasantry into its free vis and the servile dasyus,
who, transmuted as Vaisyas alld Sudras, form respectively the third
and fourth varzlas.
The Long Transltion: The Gangetic Basin

The next stage in the htstory of the Indian peasantry is
dominated by the clearing of extensive tracts iD the Gangetic basin.
It was undoubtedly a long and tortuous process, with its countless
unrecorded heroisms and tragedies; and it could not have taken place
without substantial alterations in the mode of social orgartisati¢n.
Down to BC 2000 or thereabouts, agriculture was mainly
19 Cf. Das, Econonqic History..., p 32; and N Bandyopadbyaya, Ecvnofnic Life and
Progress in Aslcient India, Calcutta, 1965, pp 130-131. Ths ord hnld to mean
rice is dhanatl: see llowever, Kosatnb, Introdltotion..., p 83.
20 Kosumbi, Isltro.dEwetiozt..., pp 70-71.
21 Ibid, p 83.
22 Bandyopadhyaya, Ecostontic Life..., I, p 125.
23 Das, Ecos10nzEc History. . ., pp 25-26.
24 Cf. Dev Raj Chanana, Slavery i71 Ancient Illdia, Delhi, 1960, p 20.
2S Kosombi, Introdlletion..., pp 92-93. Women slaves were particularly pr,zed
(Chanana, Slavery..., pp 20-21); but this does not necessarily mean that
they and tlleir children could r,ot be put to work for their masters.

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confined to the Indlls basin and its periphery, hardly ever venturing
beyond the 30-inch isohyet. The area of the heaviest concentration
of rural population in India today, the Gangetic basin, was probably
then as densely forested as was the Amazon basin not long ago. But
with the appearance of copper and the shafted axe, present n a late
stratum at Mohcnjodaro,26 the first clearings could begin. These
started naturally enough from the drier or western side. The 'Copper
Hoard' people, using ochre-coloured pottery (OCP), first established a
few scattered settlements in the Doab and Rohilkhand during the
earlier half of the second millennium.27 The succeeding 'blackand red
ware' (B & R) culture continued with the copper and stone {ndustry;
the settlements now extended, though in the saine sparse fashion, up to
western Bihar. These were agricultural communities which, like Rig-
vedic Aryans, raised rice and barley, but not wheat. Two pulses, gram
and khesari, also appear, along with black gram, and an unpublished
identification would put evell cotton among the OCP-level crops.28
These settlements could not, however, multiply until the coming
of iron, or rather the comang of tile metallurgy which can produce
iron tools with steeled edges.29 Iron being cheaper than copper, iron
tools tend to be substituted for bronze as well as stone blades. More-
over, with iron, tools in other materials (such as bone arrow-heads)too
can be made more easily. The {mpact of iron is therefore immediately
reflected in the archaeological record.
The archaeologists have gradually been pressing back the date
ofthe introduction of iron; on the present evidence, it is likely that
its arrival ill the upper Gangetic basin took place around BC 1000 near
the beginning of the Painted Grey Ware (PGW) culture (c. BC 1100-
500).3° The archaeological evidence has not been precisely reconciled
26 Stuart Piggott, Prehistoric India, p 228, It has not so far been found among the
tools of the 'Copper Hoard' people, however.
27 B B Lal, "The Copper Hoard Culture of tho Ganga Valley9', Aettiquity, XLVI,
pp 282-287; R C Gaur, "The Ochre-coloured Pottery",Sollth Asian ArchaeolOgy,
1973, ed. van Lohuizen de Leeuw and Ulbagho, LeidenS 1974, pp 53-62. The
dating )s on the basis of thermoluminiscence; after, the calibration of the
carbon dates of the Indus culture, the OCP culture can no longer be regar-
ded as contemporaneous with it, excepting its last phase.
28 See K. A. Chowdbury, Ancieslt Agriculture and Forestry in Northern India (a
report on plant remains at Atranjikhera), Bombay, 1977, pp 60-63; and Sabi,
"Early History of Agriculture...", op cit.
29 For an illuminating survey of the pre-history of iron, see Leonard Woolley,
The Beginnings of Civilization, pp 277-283.
30 Dilip Chakrabarti, "The beginning of lron of [ndia", Antiquity, L, (1975),
pp 118-ll9. His date is BC 800 for the Upper Gangetic Basin and 750 BC for
"Eastern India". M D N Sahi, however, argues for as early a period as the
13th century BC on the basis of the evidence from Eran a}ld Ahar in Central
India (Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Bomby (1980) session
pp 104-1 1 1). tahe precise time limits of the PGW culture are difficult to set
because of the varied carbon-14 dates at different sites. B B Lal has summed
up the evidence in a cyclostyled rXlonograph, "The Painted Grey Ware
Cul ture", 1981, pp 34-37.

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36 Se references in Bandhyopadyaya, Economic Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , I, p 13 -134; . . . . Das,
82 SOCIAL SCIENTXST
with the literary evidence; but it is practically certain that the PGW
represents an 'Aryan' phase, for iron already begtns to be mentioned
in the lato Vedic texts.31
In its immediate impact iron seems to have caused a rapid
spread of the clearings, as can be established by comparing the large
number of PGW and contemporaneous B & R settlements with those
of the preceding OCP and B & R cultures over a much longer time-
span.32 Conditions conducive to the rassing of wheat reappear, and
new pulses and lentils are added to the crop-list.33
Agricultural conditions in the Gangetic basin were vastly
different from those of the Indus culture. Floodlands and dykes were
of only marg1nal significance here.The bounty of the monsoon liberated
the peasant from those narrow strips to which alone the flood gave
fresh doses of moisture and silt. In the Gangetic plamns the yield
would improve if after some years of cultivataon one shifted one's
field anew to virgin land (claimed from the forest). The 'jhum'
method required collective action by groups living in small migratory
hamlets; andthis was basis enough for the formation of tribes like
the Sakyas, who were pre-eminently peasantS.34 'Free men farmers',
possibly answering to the free peasants of the Rigveda, are also
encountered in the Jatakas.35
Conditions of forest clearance also necessitated at the same
time a form of non-peasant agriculture. In the freshly cleared ground,
full of roots and hard soil (now difficult even to trace owing to
centuries of ploughing), a very heavy plough would be needed; it
would be heavier still if it was armed with stone, instead of an iron
tip. This makes intelligible the reference in the late Vedic and
Brahmana literature to ploughs drawn by six, eight or even 12 oxen.36
Such ploughs imply masters working with servile labourers. Keith,
indeed, stated his impression that during this period, "for the peasa?1t
working on his own field was being substituted the land-owner culti-
vatinghis estate by means of slaves".37 The impression is corroborated
31 For the references to iron in the Atharva-veda see Bandyopadhyaya, Economic

Life..., 1, pp 158-160. A synthesis of archaeological and literary materials
is offered in R S Sharma, "Class Formation and its Material Basis in the
Upper Gangetic Basin", lHR, J I ( l ), 1975, pp 1-13 .
32 See B B Lal, "Painted Grey Ware Culture", op cit, pp 5-8. About 650 PGW
sites are said to have been discovered.
33 K A Chowdhury, A7lcient Agricllltllre..., p 63> Sahi, "Early History of Agri-
culture...", op cit.
34 Kosambi, Introduction..., p 144.
35 Narendra Wagle, Society of the Time of the Buddha, Bombay, 1966, p 151
Economic History..., pp 90-91

37 Cambridge History of India, I, ed. E J Rapson, Delhi reprint 1955, FsP 114-llS,
The presence of "serfs" is doubted by R S Sharma, IHR, lI (1), p 8.

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43 Kosambi, Introduction . . . . . . , p 121-123. For the Nisadas, se Vivekanand Jha,
by the testimony of the Jatakas, where we frequently meet "big

Brahmana land-owners who have their fields cultivated by their slaves
or day labourers"; also scattle magnates' owning enormous herds
(e.g., 30,000 heads) with numerous slaves and hirelings (1,250 under one
magnate).38 The evidenese closes with Kautilya's Arthasastra, where
there are references to slaves and hired workmen of apparently large
private land-owners. 39 The same text introduces us even more
prominently to the rulers personal demesne, the sita lands, in part
cultivated by slaves, wage-earners and convicts, under the supervision
of officials, and in part leased to share-croppers (ardhasitikas) and
others40.
The Gangetic forests also brought in a new element of popu-

lation which in the Indus basin could not have been very significant-
the hunting folk. As the agricultural communities initially penetrated
the Gangetic basin, the forest becanze accessible to the hunting tribes.
Copper and, later on, iron-fashioned tools would make hunting more
efficient, in the later levels at the PGW sites, ,iron spear-heads and
arrow-heads become common.4l On the other hand, the expanding
populations of the agricultural settlements would provide markets for
animal skins, other forest produce, and even meat.42 In return, the
hunters collld supplement their own forest diet with foodgrains. It
is possible then to suggest that all around settled communities the
food-gathering population kept on expanding, and so the Nagas,
Kolis and Nisadas would flourish, and their influences would even
begin to permeate the fringes of late Vedic ritual.43 They were impor-
tant enough even by the end of fourth century B C to form with the
cattle-tenders the third of the seven Indian castes described by
Megasthenes, the peasants comprising the second.44
By the middle of the first millennium B C the long period of
38 R Fick, The Social Organization of North East lndia in Buddha's Time, English
tr, Calcutta, 1920, pp 243-244; and Atindra Nath Bose, Social and Rural Eco-
nomy of Northern India, cir. 600 B C-200 A D., Calcutta, 1970, pp 62-93.
39 Cf Sibesh Bhattachara, "Land system as reflected in Kautilya's ArtAtasastra",
lndian Economic and Social History Review (lESHER), XVI ( l ), pp 85-95.
40 U N Ghoshal, Contributions to the Hindu Revenue System, Calcutta, 1929, pp
29-31, 34; Kosambi, Introduction..., p 215.
41 B B Lal, "Painted Grey Ware Culture", op cit., pp 22-23.
42 Bones of wild animals (stag, nilgai and even leopard), evidently eaten, have
been found at the PGW sites of Hastinapura and Atrarljikhera (B B Lal,
op cit, p 17). One is reminded of Asoka's taste for peacocks and deer; he still
ate their meat when the number of animals daily killed in his kitchen had
been vastly reduced (Rock Edict 1).
"From Tribe to Untouchable; the case of Nisadas," Indian Sociery. Historical

Probings, ed. R S Sharma and V Jha, New Delhi, 1974, pp 69-75.
44 RC Majumdar (ed), The Classical Accounts of India; Calcutta, 1960, pp 225,
2a7, 264.

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30 SOCIAL SCIENTlST
agricultural penetration eastward had created a complex social

formation marked by peasant communities created within tribes,
interspersed with settlements of servile or semi-servile labourers
working under land-owning masters, while hunting groups enjoyed a
fresh though passing economic importance. These varied social forms
probably explain the rather heterogeneous nature of the emerging
polities of the mahajanapadas, with the rulers' powers strongly circum-
scribed by powerful aristocracies and by the rising pretensions of
the Brahmana priesthood already in control over large areas of land.45
The king was called 'the devourer of peasants', since it was the
peasants alone, and not the great land-owners or the Brahmans, who
paid him the levy in grain.46
Formation of the Caste Peasantry

The conditions I have outlined {n the preceding section ulti-
mately proved to be those of a transition-a long transition certainly,
but one leading ultimately to a quite different structure of social and
economic relations. It seems to me that from around B C 500 there
was an immense acceleration in the process of change for almost 500
years, which universalised peasant prod uction and also stmultaneously
created the caste-divided peasantry.
For the universalisation of peasant farming, we can perhaps
suggest two factors as of crucial importance. The first is the extending
use of iron. As time passed the extraction of the metal ;1lcreased in
volume and the resulting cheapness diversified its use. Quantity
influenced quality. In time iron tools would become directly available
jto the peasant, and that would be the turning point. The first recorded
reference to the plough containing the "iron point9' is apparently in
the Manusmriti (x, 84), which may be of as early a date as B C 200,
but is probably to be put a little later.47 But iron 'ploughshares'
have been found with the Northern Black Polished Ware (NBP),
beginning c B C 500.48 For the effect of this wider use of oron one
may invoke Gordon Childe's perceptive observation that "cheap iron
democratized agriculture". "Any peasant" could now "afford an «ron
axe to clear fresh land for himself and iron ploughshares wherewith
45 Fick, indeed, believed on the basis of the evidence of the Jatakas that the
land was "mostly in the possession of Brahmanas" (Social Orgaz1isation....
opcit,p241).
46 Cf R S Sharma in IHR, II (1), pp 8-9.
47 TheLawsof AIanu, tr. G Buhler,Oxford, 1886, pp 420-421.

48 B B Lal, "Painted Grey Ware Culturo", p 13. A s.ckle and hoe-tip have been
found at the PGW site of Jakhera (ibid., p 13); and this suggests a slight
modification of the statement that "iron agricultural implements" begin
only with th NBP (R S Sharma, in IHR, II (1), p 2). Yet the large relative
increase in the number of such implements beginlling with NBP remains
a fact.

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50 Das, Economic History . . . . . . , p 93, 202.
THE PEASANT IN 1NDIAN HISTORY 31
to break stony ground".49

The other factor which must have contributed to the spread of
peasant agriculture was the growing multiplicity of crops. Sugarcane
is mentiolled in the Atharva-veda, cotton and sndigo in the Jatakas.50
Quate a long list could be prepared of the crops noticed in the Indian
and Greek sources before the birth of Christ.5l The growth of the
urban markets resultinK from the rise of towns from the sixth century
B C onwards,S2 was bound to induce an extension in cultivation of
market and industrial crops. There were new methods of cultivation
too, notably, rice transplantation by which Kosambi explains a
passage in the Arthasastra.s3 These developments required more
intensive and skilled labour, and called for decision to be made
closely on the basis of knowledge of both soil and crop. Extensive
agriculture controlled by 'magnates' thus must have tended to become
obsolete and competitively unrewarding, since only peasant farming
could possess the capacities that were now in demand.
Once the greater efflciency of peasant agriculture was established,
pressures for surplus-extraction, whether in the form of tax or 'rent',
would reinforce its expansion. Already, as we have seen, the peasants
were the basic tax-payers; and the kingdoms of the fifth and fourth
centuries BC and, finally, the Mauryan Empire, probably greatly
intensified the drive for tax-revenue and so sought to settle more
peasants. Accordingto Megasthenes, the peasants paid to the king a
Sland-tribute' as well as a fourth of the crop (by another version,
three-fourtlls).54 Kautilya indeed stressed that settlements in the
royal lands should consist overwhelmingly of sudra-karsakas tSudra
cultivatorslpeasants) and other lower classes, they being more amenable
49 What happened in History, revised ed., 1954, p 183. The first depiction of a
peasant in lndia, driving a plough with a pair of oxen, is in a Kusana frieze,
c 200 A D (reproduction in D D Kosambi, Culture and Civilization in Ancient
Jnv:Sia in HistoricsI Outline, London, 196S, plate 15). The picture may well be
of a 20th-century Indian peasant ploughing.
51 For such a list see N N Kher, Agrarian and Fiscal Economy in the Mauryan and
Post-Mauryan Age, Delhi, 1973, pp 379-400. Some individual items on the
list, such as maize, groundnut and chill;, are however domonstrably erro-
neous. Kautilya (Arthasastra, IT:24) specifies the major crops sown for the
spring and autumn harvests (translation by Shamasastry, Mysore, 1956,
pp 127-131).
52 For th i s second ' urban revlouti on', see A Ghosh, The City in Early Historical
India, Simla, 1973; and R S Sharmass review in IHRs I (1), pp 98-103.
53 Kosambi, Introduction..., p 130. One would wish for a more explicit
slatement of this practice in view of its importance.
54 See accounts of Diodorus Siculus and Strabo, translations in RC Majumdar
(ed.), The ClassEcal Accounts of India, Calcutta, 1960, pp 237, 264, 287 (note 20).
lt is posssble that the 'lat1d-tribute' represents the king's traditional levy of
one-sixth of the produce also laid down by Kautilya.

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56 Cf Sharma, Sudras . . . . . , p 230-31; also Journalof BiAlar Research Society, LXlV,
32 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
to exploitation.55 The large land-holders with their own cattle and

labourers as also the ruler's labour-tilled lands, significant still in the
Arthasvstra, could not easily survive the nesv conditions. Even where
ownership continued with the 'lord' or master (svamin), it was
obviously becoming more convenaent for him to lease out the land to
karsakas rather than till it under his own direct management . 56 There
would certainly remain some exceptions: even after the Mallryall
period, we encounter in Patanjali (2nd century B C) a land-holder
supervising ploughing by five labourers.57 The modest scale may be
noted.
A social change accompanied this 'democratisation' of
agriculture. The tribes ljanapadas) disintegrated, tobs replaced by
jatis (castes). In the Buddha's time, we begin to hear of jatis,
'excellent as well as low'; but the tribe and jvti were still only loosely
differentiated; the Buddha could be said to belongto the Sakya jati
where it surely enough means the tribe.58 Endogamy characterised
tribal organisation, a feature which was to be transmitted in such
rigorous form to the jatis.59 Megastheness descriptions of the seven
castes, where the 'husbandmen' form a separate caste by themselves,
would seem to be the outcome of a genuine confusion caused by the
rise of peasant and occupational jatis by the side of the formal varna
system.60 Manu's codification of the occupational jatis as mixed castes,
seems to set the lower limit to the period of the formation of the
essential elements of the jati system.6l Once the occupational jatis
were formed, the tribe naturally broke up into separate endogamous
55 RSSharma, Sudrasin Ancient India, Delini, l9S8, pp 146-149. CfKosambi,

Introduction..., pp 219-220. Sibesh Bhattacharya (IESHR, XVI (1), pp 85-96)
is right in pointing out that Kautilya does not recommend peasant ownership
but Sharma, whom he criticises on this score, seems quite well aware of the
distinction between peasant cultivation and peasant ownership and also of
the rather vague connotation of karsaka, which may mean peasant as well as
agricultural labourer. But the Arthasastra in the present case uses the term
clearly enough in the sense of peasant-cultivators.
iii&iv, 1958,p8.
57 Sharma, ibid, p 178.
58 Cf Narendra Wagle, Societyof the Time of theBuddha, Bombay, 1966, pp 122-123.

59 Note the Buddha's story of the Sakyas who married their own sisters to avoid
marrying olltside the tribe; also the legend of the origin of the Lichhavis
(Wagle, ibid, pp 103-104).
60 The Greek accounts of the lndian castes will be found in R C Majumdar (ed),
Classical Accounts of India, pp 224-226, 260-268. The Arab geographers of the
lOthcentury^Dandevenlatercontinue with this number of seven castes,
showing how an error can be perpetuated by simple autonomous transmission
in the face of every opportunity for direct observation.
61 Manusmriti, x, 6-57 (tr. Buhler), pp 493-515.

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63 Manu, V, 53, 79 (tr. Buhler), p 419-420. Cf. R S Sharma, Sudrons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , p 232.
THE PEASANT IN INDIAN HISTORY
33
segments, within a larger social system.62 Such separation of the

peasants from superior elements can be inferred by analogy from later
known examples. The Badgujars separated from the Gujars out of an
original Gurjara tribe and the Rajgonds similarly from the Gonds: in
each case the superiors claimed a Kshatriya (Rajput) status, while
the peasants were relegated to the position of a Sudra jati.
What resulted from this breakdown of the tribal system was
not a single peasant caste, but a large number of peasant jatis. Some
perhaps simply retaineds lke the later Gujars and Gonds, the names
of the original tribes.63 The vis peasantry was now a matter of the past.
Manu still repeats the formal statement that agriculture was one of
the Vaisya occupations, though it was clearly held to be the Iowliest
of these; and the slabourer in tillage' was Sudra. But Kautilya's
designation of Sudra-karsakas more properly defined the actual status
ofthe peasants. By the seventh century A D., Yuan Chwang would
classify the peasants simply as Sudras.64
The emergence of 'peasant-caste' was the reflection in part of
another development, namety, the further growth of the social division
of labour demarcating the peasants more firmly from the artisans.
Wr.iting of the second Iron Age an Europe, Gordon Chiilde stressed the
importance of the entry into the "archaeological record" of "new
tools and labour-savang devices tsuch as) hinged tongs, shears, soythes,
rotary querns". These laid the basis for "a number of new full-time
specialists" like glass-svorkers, potters, etc.65 By the first century
9. D., the Taxila excavations give us firm indications of the occurrence
of some of the technological devices (shears, rotary querns) which
Childe has spoken of.66 The new full-time professions must have led
to a separation of the artisan communitJes from the peasantry, the
Jatakas introduce us to 'manufacturers' villages' exclusively peopled
by smiths or carpenters.67 These formed the basis of the new occupa-
tional jatis, the 'mixed castes of Manu, which include those of
carpenters, charieteers and physicians.68
62 One is reminded here of Kosambi's view of the historical growth of the caste
system as a process of "tribal elements being fused into a general society"
(Kosambi, Introduction..., p 25).
64 T Wat ers, On Yuang Chwan's Travels in India, London, 1904, Vol 1, p 168-169.
Cf. R S Sharma, Sudras..., pp 232-234.
65 V Gordon Childe, Social Evolution, ed Sir Mortimer Wheeler, Fontana Books,
1963, p 110.
66 See John Marshall, Taxila, Cambridge, 1951, It, p 555, for scissors, a developed
form of shears; and ibtd, p 486, for rotary guerns.
67 R Fick, Social Organisation..., pp 280-285.
68 Manu, X, 47-48 (tr Buhler), p 413. What is difficult to explain is why these
artisans should have received a status lower than that of Sudras in social
ranking.

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SO CIAL SC1EN T1ST
34 There was, finally, the subjugation of the food-gathering

population which involves the creation of the 'menial' castes. It is
of some significance that in all early texts the ancestors of the later
'Untouchables' are extellsively connected with hunting, fishing, work-
ing on animal skins and dealing in bamboo.69 In other words, their
origins lap mainly amidst the food-gathering forest folk. I have
suggested that during the 'long transition' in the Gangetic basin the
size of forest populations increased considerably. At a particlllar
point. reached probably at diSerent times in different localities, this
co-existence between agriculture and hunting broke down. The raising
of leguminous crops reduced the villagers' dependencW on animal meat
or fish;70 and growing use of cotton affected the demand for animal
skins. The areas of forest that Ithe hunters had to have for their
subsislence llad now to go; the clash betsveen the Sakyas and Kolis
maywell illustrate the conflict between the advancing agricultural
pioneers and their opponents in the forests.7l In the foresters' obstruc-
tion of the peasants' quest for more land, there was reason enough
for the peasants to entertain a bitter hostility towards the forest
peoples. The animal-killing jatis are indeed looked down upon with
as much scorn in the Buddhist texts as in the Brahmanical works of
the period.72 Manu sets down the code according to which they were
to be treated once they were subjugated and reduced to mixed jatis.
As 'Chandalas and Svapachas' they were to be kept out of towns and
villages and they were to perform the most menial offices only.73 Here
was the beginning of 'UntouchalJility' and the creation of the menial
castes, forming an ostracised rural proletariat that was henceforth to
remain a specific feature of the Indian social order.
The five hllndred years preceding the birth of Chirst must have
been one of the most formative periods of Indian social history. They
moulded the basic contours of the casto system, with a peasantry
deeply divided into endless endogamous communities and rigorously
separated from the artisans as well as 'menial' labourers. This social
fabric could not have come of atself; its erection needed direction and
sustenance from a whole new system of ideas and beliefs.
This new system is profoundly associated with Buddhism.
69 This can be seen flom Manu's enumeration of fhe occupations of most of the
'mixed' jatis: Nisadas, fish ng; Meclas, Andhras, Chunchus, and Madgus,
'slaughtcr of wild animals'; Kshattris, Ugras and Ptlkkasas, 'catching and
killing (allinlals) liveng in holes'; Katavara, Dhigvanas working in leather; and
Pandusopaka, dealing in cane (Manu, X, 39, 37, 4S, ¢9, tl Buhler, pp 411, 413-
414). Cf also Vivekanand Jha, 1HR, Il (I), p 19 The Chandalas and Nisadas
(Nesadas) both appear as hunters in Buddhist rexts (ibid, pp 22-23).
70 Kosambi, Introduction . . ., p 1 89.
71 Ibid,p12,2,.
72 Vivekanand Jha, IHR lI (1), pp 22-23.
73 The basic constraints are given in Mano, X, 40-56 (tr Buh1er) pp 414-415.

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Kosambi saw in its attack on Brahmanical animal sacrifices, the

hostility of the "cattle-raasing" Vatsya against obsolete pastoralism.74
This seems to reduce the social relevance of Buddhism to a very
narrow sphere. With much trepidation, I would venture to suggest
that the belief in the karma doctrine and the ahisnsa, the two basic
elements of Buddhism, had a much profounder relataonship with the
larger social processes at work.
Gautama Buddha is not known to have preached the excellence
of the caste system; and the Asokan edicts are remarkable for their
exclusion of all references to any obligation imposed by varna and jati.75
And yet the karma theory, which both Buddhism and Xainism wigorously
propagated, proved to be the most eSective rationalisation of the caste
systetn. Whatever the Buddhist notion of the individual soul, the
Buddhist traditon saw cycles of birth and rebirth in andividual
terms.76 Once the cycle was so conceived, it justified one's present
position in a low jati by virtue of the deeds in a previous existence,
and promised a higher one if one performed the set obligations
excellently. By Manu's time, this is firmly a part of the caste
doctrine.77
The ahimsa, in its precise application, might have owed some-
thing to the jealousy aroused by the rich, land-controlling Brahmans,
who displayed the power of their ritual by large animal sacrifices. But
the prejudice against animal slaughter was likely to have derived in
much larger measure frorn the peasant's hatred of the hunting tribes of
the forest. Tlle Asokan edicts contain express ;njunctions against hunt-
ing and fishing78. This explains too the hostility n the Buddhist texts
towards the hunting peoples. Ahimsa could thus justify the subju-
gation and ostracism of these communities, the basis of untoucha-
bility. But the cycle went on: as the ahimsa doctrine came to be
accepted by Brahmanism, even the occupation of the peasant could
be termed a sinful and lowly one, for did not the plough with its iron
74 Ko sa1ubi, 111troductiozl . . ., 1 5 8- 5 SS .
75 Moderrl vsews of the Buddillst attitllde to i'caste" are discussed in Debipra.cad
Chattopadllyaya, Lokayata, New Delhi, 1959, pp 459-466. Thc par.icular
negative aspect of thc Asokan edicts has received stlrprisillgly little attention,
so also tlle htlm;ane injtlnction in them to tleat well tlae sl.lves ancl wage-
earnels (dasa-bAlataga) (R E CiX, Xl Zc X.ill & P E Vl[; also R E V) Ihese last
may refer to domestics, bllt Asoka might well have in mind .hW village slaves
and labotl14ers. Compare the village dasi-.da.sa bhataka kammalcara in A>ilinda-
panho (ed V Trenckner, Londoll. 1962, 1r 147; t1 R'lys Davids, I, p 2,r9).
76 rhe Jatakas do this fol GautasllBcl Buddha hims_lf. 'The lklillnda>7anSl0 recalis
that Nagasena and K;ng Milinela had bf en born in a prex7iotls life as a monk
and novice (Questions of King Militlda, tr T V>l Rllys Davi ds, Oxforel, 1 890, Vol I,
Pp 4-6).
77 See, for example, Manusmriti, X, 24, tr Buhler, p 412.
78 Pillar Edict V and the Qandahal inscription. See Romila 'Thapar, XsoAca and
the Decline of the Mauryas, Znd ed, Delhi, 1973.

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36 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
point injure the earth and the creatures living in it?79 This view
came to be shared by later Buddhism as svell.80
The new social situation, in ts own turn, aSected the
religious svorld. As the tribal moorings, with their local customs
and superstitions, collapsed, and the peasant became, as member of
a jati, part of a "general society", he equally stood in need of a
general religion. For this there was no profirision {n the sacred ritual
of the Brahmans and the elitist Sangha of Buddhism. But Buddhism
developed by first century A. D. the concept of the Bodhisattva, a
power whose grace every one could invoke by direct forms of worship.81
Almost simultaneously, if not a little earlier} came the emergence of
Vaishnavism, with its concept of bhakti, establishing a personal
relationship between the deity and the devotee.82 The literal signi-
ficance of the name Krisua and the anecdotes of his childhood
proclaim vividly the rustic elements in the great cult.83 This was
the beginning of a kind of Peasant H;nduism.
South India
Southern India deserfires separate treatment because in its early
social evolution it followed an independent line of development
down to the Mauryan conquests (third century B. C.). The plough
appeared in the South in the second millennium B C with a
basicatlyneolithic culture;84 the crops raised were the ragi millet
(in two varieties), wheat, horse gram and green gram. Rice and the bajra
millet began to be cultivated after the coming of iron, c. B. C. 1000.
Agriculture of this kind implied the existence of a peasantry from the
late neolithic times. A large pastoral sector as also suggested by
79 Manu, X, 84 (tr Buhler), pp 420-421
80 The Sage is said to have forbidden the monks from engagxng in cultivation
because this involved "destroying lives by plough;ng and watering field"
(l-tsing, A Record of the Baddhist Religgon as practised in India and the Malay
Archipelago, tr J Takakusu, Oxford, 1896, p 62).
81 A late Kusana (4th century A D) sculptured relief shows a Bodhisattva with a
peasant driving a plough placed beneath him (Kosambi, Introduction..., plate
16). A K Warder's essay "Feudalism and Mahayana Buddhism", Indian Society:
Historical ProbiJzgs, ed R S Sharma and v Jha, pp 156-174, contains interesting
suggestions; but the associatlon with 'feudalism' is rather weakly argued.
82 Suvira Jaiswal, The Origin and Development of Vaisnavism, Delhi, 1967, pp 110-
115.
83 lbid, pp 151-152. There is support for this in iconography as well. Sankarsana,

withwhom Krisna-Vasudevawas jointly worshipped in the 1st century B C,
S'invarsablyfigures" holding the pestle and the plough (ibid, pp 53-54, 56-57,
68).
84 This ls deduced from the anchylosis of the hock joints in cattle bones, indica-
ting their use for heavy draught work (M D N Sahi, *'Early Agriculture...s,
op cit).

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37
remains of enormous cattle-pens.85 Almost all pre-Mauryan sites are

on the Karnataka plateall, sllggesting that cultivation was as yet
confined to the drier zone. Here too are concentrated all the eleven
rock inscriptions of Asoka found in the south.86 Apparently the
eastern coastal plains, the home of the Andhras, Cholas and Pandyas
mentioned in Asokan Rock Edicts II and XIII were still only very partly
cleared. It was at this point that, with the Mauryan arms, the
northern culture arrived.
The effects of its arrival on the South are important also for
understanding what had really been happening in the North. The
'four-varna' system of the legal theorists failed to be implanted in the
South.87 The peasants were classed as Sudras, not Vaisyas, an impor-
tant index of the contemporary status of the peasants in India
generally. The warriors and merchants could not separate and form
into distinct castes, and this perhaps suggests that social differentia-
tion in South Ind1a had not yet reached a suffciently high level. But
jatis came to be as firmly established in the South as anywhere else in
lndia, possibly by wholesale conversion of the tribes. In such con-
version the Brahmans apparently played a crucial role as high priests
of the new order.88 So too was brought the harsh social division
betweenthe peasant tulavars or vellcllar) and the menial castes. The
hierarchical distinction between the two classes is brought out in
"late classical (Tamil) works" of the fifth or sixth century A. D.89
The absence of the second and third varnas does not necessarily
mean that differentiation did not subsequently proceed rapidly enough.
In spite of it having been vigorously asserted, it is difficult to admit,
even as a hypothesis, that there was ever an "alliance" between the
Brahmans and peasants and that this served as "the keystone of local
south Indian societies".90
First Millennium: Village Coxnmunity and "Feudalism"

Kosambi propounded a sombre view of the economic and
85 For the erops and eattle-pens, Bridget and Raymond Allehin, Birth of ledian
Civilization, pp 262-264. For iron, Dihp Chakraborti, in Antiquity, L (1976),
pp 119-122.
86 Brahmagiri and Maski, two sxtes of these insersptions, are themselves pre-
historie settlements.
87 For a somewhat diSerent appraisal of the faetors which eaused this result, see
R S Sharma, Social Changes in Early Medieval lndia, Delhi, 1969, p 12.
88 It is, however, open to question whether the Brahmans were not preceded by
the Jaina andBuddhist monks. But their soeial outlook in respeet of jatis
could not have been different from that of the Brahmans; and they shared the
same culture.
89 Burton Stein, Peasaz7t State as?Z¢ Society iZt Medieval SoutAr lzldia, Delhi, 1980,
p.71 .
90 Ibid, pp 70-71, 83. It would have been a strange alliance, where the Brahmans
would not even eoneede a Vaisya status to their allies.

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38 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
cultural performance of this entire period axld ascribed it to a

"complete victory of the willage with con3equences far deadlier than
any invasion".91 He believed ithat agricultural productivity actually
declined.92 For southern India durillg the same millennium Burton
Stein postulates the concept of a sPeasant Society' with agricultural
technology as a "constant factor".93
The notion of changelessness is, however, not supported by the
evidence we can assemble on agricultural technology. Additions
to cxops continued. Bajra, the bulrush millet, which does not appear
in Kautilya's Art/asastra, 11, 24, became an important crop in the
north along with the Great Millet, Juar (sozghtlm vulgare), which
seems to have arrived after the beginning of the Christian era.94
Together they greatly reinforced skharif' cropping in the dry zone of
the north-west. Fine varieties of cotton were developed to provide
the muslin that won an important luxury market an the Roman
world. 9 5 Kosambi himself pointed out that the first evidence for the
coconut on the eastern and western coasts comes from the first century
before and after Christ.96
The Slldarsana lake in Saurashtra, its history from the Mauryas
to the Guptas illuminated by epigraphic evidence, marks the beginning
of the recorded history of tank and bund irrigation.97 The construction
of irrigation tanks seems to have become well established in the south
by Chola times.98 The "tremendous' reservoir of King Bhoja (llth
century) in central India finds a description in Kosambi's own pages.99
Throughout the lndian Peninsula, the tanks created by bunds have uti-
lised every conveniellt undulation in the ground; and their construction
as it took place must have greatly extended cultivation and improved
cropping.
91 Infroductiofl..., p 243.
92 "Tlle average yield bvcame less (though compensated by somewhat improved
mPthods of cultivation) as deforestation increased" (ibid, p 228).
93 Peasant State asld Society..., pp 16 ff. See p 24 for the statelllent about agri-
cultural teehnology. It is always dangerous to assume that a factor, just
because it is unknown, mtlst be a constant one.
94 Bridge t and Raymond Al l chin, Birth o.f Ind(an Civilkation , p 266.
95 E H Warmingtoil, The Comnlerce between the Roman Empire and India, 2nd ed,
Delhi, 1974, pp 210-212.
96 Kosambi, Introdueriosl ..., pp 255-256.

97 The inscriptions are those of Rudradaman (A D 150) and Skandagupta (Sth
century) on the same rock on which Asokan rock edicts are inscribed
(Girnar). See James Burgess, Report on the Antiquities °f Kathiawad and
Kachh..., 1874-75, reprint, Varanasi, 1971, pp 93-95, 128-138. R N Mehta gives
a detailed report of his survey of the area with a persuasie reconstruction
of tle original works and the repairs (Journal of the Oriental Institute. XVIII,
1&2,1968,pp20-38).
98 Bur to n S te i n, Peasant State and Society . . ., p p 24-25 .
99 Introduction..., p 281.

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THE PEASANT IN INDIA HISTORY
93
The use of cattle-power for continuous rotarymotion too would

seem to belong to this period. This is no older in the Chinese and
Mediterranean civilisations than second century BC.10l In India, the
first evidence for even the manual rotary quern and quartzite cru3hing
mill comes from Taxila, about first century A D.10 It {s, therefore,
almost certain that the use of cattle to rotate a horizontal drawbar
belongs to the succeeding centuries. Once the possibilitv was known,
its appl i cations could be multiple; for threshing; 103 for pressing oi 1; 104
and for crushing sugar in both kinds of mills, viz, the mortar-and-
pestle and the wooden rollers.105 In all these operations cattle-power
would have replaced an enormous amount of human labour, rendered
hitherto presumably by slaves or semi-servile labourers.
Agriculture, then, did not rernain stable during the first thousand
years after Christ; and over this long span productivity probably
increased considerably. None of the improvements were, howevers
of a nature to subvert peasant production; on the contrary, as we
have seen, sonle tended to make agrarian slave-labour sllperfluous,
In terms of social relataons, the period saw the completion of
the great divisaon between the peasantry and landless labour. I have
arg(led elsewhere that the immense seasonal fluctuation in demand
for labour on the field, called for a constant reserve of accessible
labour supply.106 Theoretwically, this could have been created by simple
free market forces; but these svould have enlarged the share of wage
costs in the peasant's produce and so reduced correspondingly the
size of the surplus. The presence of a specially repressed proletariat
was thus of advantage to almost every other class of rural society, the
peasant as well as his superiors. This proletariat in India was largely
created out of the food-gatherers and forest folk who Ilad beell already
converted into ostracised jatis during the five centuries before Christ.
100 See Spate's (lescription of the Madtlrai-Ramanathapuram Tank Country in

O H K Spate and A T A Learmonth, India and Pakistan, London, l967,
pp 775-778
10l Lynn Wllite, Jr, sees the first contintious rotary motion in the large moAa
versatilis ( jwIeclieval Technology and Social Change, New Y ork, 1966, p p l 07-1 08);
and Joseph Needhan1 (Science asad Civilizatiosl i)l Chisla, IV, (2), Cambridge,
1965, pp 187-t90) clates its first appearance inboth civilizations to the first
half of 2nd century B C.
102 John Marshall, Taxila, II, pp 485-488. None of the specimens are 1arge
enougll to have needed animal power. Marshall's reconstructions in Vol.
IIT, plate 140, are inaccurate ill showing vertical crank-handles.
103 For references to threshing by circulat treading vf cattle, see Lallanji
Gopal, 'Technique of Agriculture in early Medieval Tndia(c 700-120() AD)',
Unzversiry of Allahabad Studies, Ancie1lt History section, 1S63-64, p 56.
tO4 Cf Needham, Scies2ce and Civilizatiotl in China, IV (5), pp 202-20S, for a Helle-
ni c 'analogue' of the Indian oil mil 1.
105 Cf Irfall Hab b in IHR V (1-2), pp 155-lS9.
106 Agrariasl SyS'teZ71 of MlJAtal India, Bombay, l963, pp 1 21-122,

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1 2 Kosambi, Introduction . . . . . . , p 30 -301; R S Sharma, Indian Feudalizm,
40 SOCIAL SCMlENTIST
One would have expected that once these depressed jatis

accommodated themselves to settled agrarian life, they might have
invoked some form of 'Sanskritization' to rise in the hierarchy and
turn into peasants themselves. This actually seems to have happened
with the Jats whose history we can follow, though with immesse gaps,
from the seventh century.107 But such cases were exceptions.Vivekanand
Jha shows that during the two phases that he distinguishes, A D
c 200-600 and c 600-1200, the number of untouchables went on increa-
sing by the additaon of new castes to the category.l08 Exclllded from
the village and prevented from holding land, the untouchables could
never become peasants, they were thus forced to follow the prescribed
menial occupations which kept them alive in the slack seasons so as to
be available when needed forwork in the field. The peasant, sorely
exploited himself, joined in practising the severest repression of the
menial labourer. Tbis has surely been one of the fatal tragedies n
Indian social history.
There was within the peasantry itself a considerable degree of
stratification: there were large numbers who were mere share-croppers
on thefields of others. When Manu says that the field belongs to
one who *'first cleared away the timber",l09 he is possibly think;ng of
peasant cultivators possessing their own field. But he says elsewhere
that the claims of "the owner of the field" have precedence over the
actual teller ("owner of the seed'');1l0 and the latter can only be a
share-cropper. Yajnavalkya underlines this when he says that the
owner of the field (ksetraswami) has the right to assign it to a cultiva-
tor of his choice. l l l
The cheice to give the land out on lease is implicit in the
obligation placed on the donees, in inscriptions from the fourth century
A D onward, "to cultivate the land (themselves) or get it cultiva-
ted " . l 12 I-tsing (7th centurt) shows that usually the Buddhist
monasteries too leased out their lands to share-croppers, giving them
sometimes oxen, but never anything else. At Tamralipti he saw a
third of the produce being brought ;n by the "tenants". It was only
107 They are found as all ostracised commullity at level with Chandalas in 7th
and 8th century Sind; they are described as Sudras in the 10th eentury, and
as peasants and 'low Vaisyas' in the 17th. See Irfan Habib, in Essays in
honour of Dr. Ganda SirFgh, ed Harbans Singh and N G Barrier, Patiala, l976,
Pp 92-1 03.
108 IHR, II (l), pp 24-31; see the eoncltlsions stated on p 31.
109 Manusmriti, IX, 44, tr Buhler, p 335. The Milindapanho, ed V Trenckner,
p 219 (tr T W Rhys Davids, IT, p 15) has a similar dictum: "When a man
elears away the jungle, he is called the owner of the land (bhumisamiko)".
110 Manusmriti. IX, 52; tr Buhler, p 336.
lll Cf R S Sharma, Aspects of Polittcal Ideas and Institutions in Ancient India,
Delhi, 1959 pp 22-23.
c 300-1200, Calcutta, 1965, p 47.

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1 3 I-tSil g, A Record of the Bud hist Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . , tr J Takakusu, p 61-62. He
some "avaricious" monasteries which "do not divide the produce,

but the priests themselves give out the works to servants, male and
female, and see that the farming is properly done"; but this necessi-
tated the priests "urging on the hired servants by force''.ll3
Some segments of the peasantry were also subject to various
constraints. On this much has been written; but the evidence un-
luckily is sparse and vague. Fa-hsien (Sth century) says that the
Buddhist monasteries were provided by the kings, elders and lay
Buddhists with land and "with husbandmen and cattle'';1l4 this
practically implves a serf-like status of the peasants donated. Other
evidence suggests constraints on the peasants' movements only.
R S Sharma presents epigraphic evidence of uneconomic constraints
going back in South India to the third century and in Orissa and
Gujarat to the saxth.1l5 The evidence becomes a little stroDger for
the subsequent centuries.t16 A form of subjection is also implied {n
visti or forced labour, which was almost unlversally present in India;
its use in regular agricultural operations seems, however, to have been
limited. 1t7
As aganst the share-croppers and possible semi-serfs, there is
evidence ofthe existence of an upper stratum among the peasants
placed in a postion to domineer over the rest. There is the cultivator
(ksetrikasya) who appears in Manu as the employer of a hired servant
or labourer (bAritya).l 18 The Milandapanho (compiled, Ist century B C
to 5th century A. D.) tells us of the 'husbandman' (kussako) vvho by
successful work in his field becomes "the owner of much flour and so
the lord of whomsoever are poor and needy''.1t9 Then there is the
"young son of a peasant (halott1zavrittiputrosya) in the Kamasutra (4th
century): Like the village headman (granad1aipati) and official (ayukta)
he has access to village women as they render forced labour (vistikarma),
work in his field (ksetrakarma) as also in his house, or taking away
says at one place (p 61) that the monasteries took a sixlh part of the
produce, which was perhaps a theoretical amount only, after the proverbial
sixth share of the king in the land's produce.
114 A Record of the Buddhist C'olmtries, tr Li Yung-hss, Peking, 1957, p 35.

S Indian Feudalism, pp 53-57. B N S Yadava would trace such subjection to
Kusana times ("Some Aspects of the Changing Order in India during Saka-
Kusana Times", Kusana Studies, Allahabad, cited IHR, I (1), p 19 n.
116 This is assembled and cautiously presented in B N S Yadava, Society and
Culture in Northern India in Twelfth Century, Allahabad, 1973, pp 163-173. Cf
also L Gopal in Journal of the Econoenic and Social History of the Orient, V.[.
iii, 1963, pp 297 ff.
1 17 See G K Raj, IHR ITI (i) 1976, pp 16-42.
118 AIanusmriti, VIlI, 243, tr Buhler, p 297.
119 Milindapnnho, ed Trenckner, p 360, tr Rhys Davids, lT, pp 269-270.

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42 SOCIAL SCIENT1ST
cotton and other fibrous materaal from him, br;ng him yarn in return. 120
This is a rare picture that we get of the actualities of the sub-exploi-
tation of peasant by peasant in ancieIlt Indian countryside.
This degree of peasant stratification raises questions about the
real nature of the Indian village community, whicll Marx and Maine
both suppose to have been based on a common ownership of the
land.12l It is indeed possible that in conditions of abundance of land,
private property in the form of saleable individual right to specific
fields might not have arisen, and, as seems to be the case with Non-
Brahman viAlages of early Cl1ola time (9th and 10th centuries), much
of tne land might have beexl held to be vested with the community.l22
But this does not necessarily imply lack of stratification. There
would be peasants with seed, reserve of grain, cattle, even possibly
slaves, and others bereft of these. It would be Ithe former who would
domenate.
In the earliest traceable allusion to the village community it is
forcibly brought home to us that only the upper stratum mn.ttered in
the community. In a little-noticed passage in the Mili71dapanho,
Nagasena tells king Menander that words do not often signify what
they mean on the face of them, and he takes as an illustration the
word"villagers" (gamikcl):
"Suppose, O king, in some village the lord of the village
(gamasamiko) were to order the crier saying: 'Go cricr, bring all the
villagers (gamika) quickly together before me'.... Now when the lord,
O kingS is thus summoning all tlle heads of houses (kutipurise), he
issues his order to all the villagers, but it is not they who assemble in
obedience to the order; it is the heads of houses. There are many
who do not come: women and men, slave girls and slaves, h;red
workmen, servants, peasantry (gamikaJ, sick people, oxen, I)uSaloes,
sheep and goats and dogs but all those do not count."tt3
120 Kamasutra, 5:5:5 & 6. I am indebted to Dr. S R Sarma fot a literal rendering
of this passage.
121 "These small and extremely ancient Indian communities based on possession
in common of the land. ." (Karl Marx, Capital, I (1867), tr S Moore and
EAveling, cd. Dona Torr, London, 1938, p 350). Sir Henry A/laine, Village
Communities in the East and West, appeared first in 1871. His views were
criticised by Baden-Powell, notably in InGian Village Community, London,
1896, mainly on the basss of Settlement Reports.
122 See Noboru Karashima, "Allur and Isanamangalam, two South Indian
Villages of the Cola Times", Proceedings of the first International Conference
Seminar of Tamil Studies, Kuala Lumpur, 1968, pp 426-436. Kara¢hitrsa admits
to presence of "agricultural labourers, who are not members of the ur (the
village assembly)."
123 Milindapanho, edV Trenckner, p 147; tr Rhys Davids, I, pp 208-209. "Village
headmen" may possibly be a better rendering of gama*amiko. Tn the last
sentence, ganlika which Rllys Davids renders as "peasantry" literally means
"villagers", here, almost ce rtainly, ordinary vi llagWrs.

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It is thus the villagers of subsistence who alone are summoned

by the headman to confabulate vvith him on matters of the village.
Altekar notices that those w}o gathered at what he styles the Primary
Village Assembly were called "mahattatnas {n U. P., mahattaras in
Maharashtra, mahajanas in Karna taka and perumakkal Dn Tamal
country, all (of which) mean the same thing, Great Men of the
Village.''l24 The exclus.iveness of the community was naturally still
more marked in the Brahman villages where all tlle power lay in the
hands of tbe vlon-peasant landowners.l25
Unfortunately, there is very little evidence to answer in specific
terms the crucial question: Why need the the upper village strata have
acted in unison and operated the village as a kind of corporation con-
trolled by themselves? Part vfthe answer may lie in the econom«c
autonomy of the vlllage, which developed once agr.iculture had been
'democratised', above all by the iron-pointed plough. Kosambi
describes the post-Mauryan villages as yieldiIlg surplus in kind to the
rulers while being self-sufficiont in the minimum requirements for
maintaining the continuity of productions very much as Marxhad
conceived the position of the village ill his "Asiatic" system. Kosambi
believed that these conditions first developed {n Nortllern India, and
later in the Deccan.126 Artisans had to move to the villages to meet
the peasants' needs, subsisting OI1 customary shares in grain and allot-
ments of small plots for cultivation. Epigraphic evidence attests to
carpenters' plots in Northern India in the Efth century,127 and the
Lekhapdd/ati speaks of the five artisans (pa7tcAla-karukv), thc car-
penter, ironsmith, potter, barber and washerman, as enlitled to
receive hclndfuls of grain from the peasant. 128 All this is sound evidence
of the artisans' fixed association with tlle village, which {n {llrn
strongly i1nplies the existence of the village as a separate but
coilective unit.
124 S A Altekar, State and Covernment in Ancient India, 3rd ed, Delhi, 1958, p 228.
Thc tcrms OCCUl in inscriptions of the Vakatakas, Pallavas and Gahadvalas.
Eleventh cclltury references to Brahman mahajans in Karnataka are cited by
Slster M Liceria, A C, in IHR, 1 (1), pp 32-33. The Chola inscriptions have
Peringurimakkal,"the great men of thc assembly" (Burton Stein, Peasant
State and Sociely..., p 145).
125 Forthesabhasofthe Brahmln villages in tll: Chola kingdom see,Altekar,
ow cit, pp 231-235, and Burton Stein, Peasant, State and Society, pp 145 ff.
Kosambi in Introduction..., pp 301-310, has some charming pages on the
Brahman village commurlitics of Goa, a combination of recorded information
(traced to the 4lh century) and his own personal recollections. See also his
Myth and Reality, Bombay, 1962, pp 152-171; Baden-Powell, 'The Villages of
Goa in the carly sixtcellth century", JRAS, 1900 , pp 261-291, and Monserra-
te's description (1579), tr Hosten, JASB, NS, XIII (1972), pp 351-35Z, 365.
1 26 Ko saInbi, Introduction . . , pp 227, 253 -254.
127 Ibid, p 312.
128 Cf B N S Yad<lva, Societ} and Culture, p 967.

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44 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
The relationship between the peasants and artisans within the

village must largely have depended upon custou}; but the actual land
allotments and settlements of disputes called for a controlling organ.
So too the important matter of the hamlet or huts of the 'menial'
castes within the village boundaries being kept under proper sub-
jection. The further use of waste land around the village and the terms
for admission of non-resident cultivators, had also to be settled by
some authority. In other words, the economic unit had to be a
social unit as well; and the 'great men' of the village, by exercising
authority in {ts name, enlarged their own income and perpetuated
their own dominance by carrying out the social functlons.
The benefits of the dominance came mainly through the fiscal
system. A large part of the surplus had to be alienated by the village
in payment of taxes.l29 The power to distribute this burden upon the
individllal villagers gave an immense advantage to the controll.ing
stratum: the 'strong' in the village used to shift the burden on to the
'weak' as it would be said for tbe early 14th ce1ltury.130 This fiscal
differentintion within the peasantry is seen by some authorities in the
distinction between udranga and uparikara already present in fifth
century inscriptiolls.l31 It may well be that it was ultimately its tax-
gatherang functions that gave the village community ak once its firmest
basis and oligarchic character.
We may here leave the stratified peasantry and our speculations
about the village community to consider the pressures to which the
taxation subjected the peasantry as a whcalet The view offered often
in text books and elsewhere that this amounted normally to one-sixth
of the produce has little reality behind it.132 This was prescribed as
the maximum for bali in the Smritis;l33 but the Arthasastra has bali
and sadbhaga (one-sixth) as separate taxes.134 The RummindWi Pillar
inscription of Asoka confirms the existence c)f this double tax. He
remitted the bali for the holy village, and continued the other tax at
the reduced rate, athbahaga tone-eighth). The Greek accounts derived
from Megasthenes also speak of two taxes, a 'rental' or 'land-tribute'
129 Cz Karashima, Proceeditgs of the Firstleternational Confetence Semislar of Tamil

Studies, opcit, p 429, on the responsibil;ty of the ur (assembly in non-
Brahman villages) to pay tax (irai) on the village land.
130 Zia Barani, Ta'rikh-i Firuz-Shahi, ed Sayyid Ahmed Khan, W N Lees and
Kabiruddin, Calcutta, 1860-1862, p 287.
131 {J N Ghoshal, Contributions to the History of the Hindu Revenue System, Znd
ed, Calcutta, 1972. pp 275-2,77, 2,80, 283-2.86, 299, 307, 319.... Cf, however,
D N Jha, Revenue System of Post-Maurya snd Gupta Times, Calcutta, 1967,
pp 53-56.
132 Cf W H Moreland, Agrarian System oS Moslem lndia, Cambridge, 1929, pp 5-6.
133 U N Ghoshal, Contributions..., p 71.
134 Arthasastrn, Il:15, tr, Shamasastry, Mysore, 1967, p 99.

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135 Cf U N Ghoshal, p 252; D N Jha, Revenue System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , p 43-45.
THE PEASANT IN INDIAN HlSTORY 45
and a land-tax of one-fourth of the produce.135 The two taxes occur

in Rudradaman's Girnar inscription tA D 150),136 whereafter there
is an increasing multiplicity of taxes.
The fact that sadbhaga (even dharmasadbhaga) continues to
appear amnug these taxes, hardly justifies the veiw that agrarian
taxation was "at lower rates in Gupta times than in the Mauryan
days''.137 Indeed, tlle term b11aga-bhoga has been held to represent
two taxes, the older sadbhaga and an additional levy (bhoga).l38 R S
Sharma states his impression that the increasing number of taxes
appearing in later inscriptions indicates a real increase in the fiscal
burden on the peasants.139 A passage ascribed to Varahamihira (6th
century) describes the sight of desolate villages abandoned by peasants
owing to the oppresslon of the bhogapati, tax-collector.t40
While tax-extraction had an immediate terror for the peasantry,
its mode of distribution also affected it in the long term. 1n its two
main vWrsions, Kosambi's axld R S Sharma's, the theory of Indian
Feudalism rests essent,ially on the mode of alienation of the tax-
resources by the rulers.14l Sharma holds the land-grants made to the
Brahmans, for which epigraphic evidence begins from the first century,
to be the forerunner of secular feudalism; but there are difflculties 1n
accepting this, especially osving to a time gap of some eight hundred
years or more before hereditary land grants to the ruler's kinsmen,
vassals and officials begin in Northern India (mainly from A D
1000) * 142
135 Translations of the passages in l:)iodorus Siculus and Strabo are are in R C
Majumdar (ed), Classical Accounts of India, pp 237, 264. There is some doubt
as to xvhether Strabo means that the peasants paid or received one-fourth of
the produce. Diodorus is apparently unambiguous here (ibid, p 287, n 20);
but see U N Ghoshal, Contributions..., pp 224-229.
137 D N Jha in Land Revenue in lndia Historical Studies, ed R S Sharma, Delhi,

1971 , p 5.
138 D N Jha, Revenue System... p 43.
139 Indian Feudalism, p 265. For these taxes see Lallanji Gopal, Economic Life
of Northern *ndia, 700-1200, Delhis 1965, pp 32-70.
140 Subhasitaratnakosa of Vidyakara, cited by Kosambi, Introduction..., p 268, and
Sharma, Indian Feudalism, p 267.
141 Kosambi sets out his t}leory in Introduction..., pp 274 ff, in two chapters; the
description of 'Indian Feudalism' as compared with European is given on
pp 326-328. Alienation of {ax-rights by rulers led to 'feudalism from above',
while in 'feudalism from below' a class of "land owners developed within
lhe village, between the state and the peasantry, to wield armed power"
over the population (ibid, p 275). Sharma, in his seminal work, Indian Beuda-
lism, c. 300-1200, does not seem to consider the latter process as contributing
to feudalism. Sharma summarises his conclusions on pp 263-272.
142 Sharma's own date (lndian Feudalism, p 283). See Rushton Coulborn's per-
ceptive remarks (in spite of his excessively narrow view of feudalism) on the
role of Brahmans in Comparative Studies in Soctety and History (CSSH, X (3),
1968), pp 57-59, especially note on p 358).

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46 SOCIAL SClENTIST
A more important source of "feudalism" was the decay of

commerce and decline of towns, which seems to have continued down
to the 11th century.143 This synchronised with a ruralisation of
the ruling class, a tendency towards its dispersal at each level, and so
the creation of hereditary tax-collecting potentates (samantas,
thakkuras, r(lnakns, rautas (rajaputras), etc.) placed one over the other
in some hierarchical order.144
Cavalry supported such dispersed political power. Chariots
were obsolete in lndia by the seventh century.145 On the other hand,
the effectiveness of the horse-rider was immensely improved with the
arrival of the saddle some time in the early centuries of the Christian
era, and of the (non-metallic) true stirrup by the 10th century.146
When the Arabs faced Dahar in battle in 712-713, the ruler of Sind was
accompanied by "sons of kings numbering 5,000horsemen''.147 Clearly,
the sons of kings represent, through a practically literal translation,
the rajaputras frautas, ancestors of the modern Rajputs). These horse-
men were the knights of 'Indian Feudalism'.148 By the 10th century
they formed the warrior class in most of Northern India and a large
part of the Deccan, even if their coalescence into a single caste was a
later phenomexion.149
The horseman represented an eSective single unit of armed
force; the warrior clans could lay claim to separate groups of villages
(traditionally numbered in multiples of six), thear members dispersed
among the villages to extract taxes and keep the peasants subjugaF
ted.150 The lower ranks of the warriors would turn into village
.
143 R S Sharma, IHR, I (l), p S; B N S Yadava, IHR, III (l), p 44. The paucity
of coins, as index of the decline, is also commented upon by L Gopal,
Economictife..., pp 215-22l.
144 Cl R S Shalma, Illdia)t Feurlalism, pp 156-209; B N S Yadava, Society and
Culture..., pp 136-163.
145 V R R Dikshitar, War in Ancient lndia, Madras, 1944, pp 165-l66.
146 On thc ineffectiveness of cavally without saddle and stirrup, see Sarva
Daman Singil, Ancieelt In1dian Warfare..., pp 69-71. The al]ival of the saddle
in the West is dated 1st century A D, but its spread was slow (Lynn White,
Jr, Medieval Technology..., pp 7-8). A saddle is probably shown in a Khaju-
raho sculptulc of the 10th centuly (Vidya Prakash, Khajuraho, Bombay, 1967,
p 38 and platc 47). On thc stirrup, sce Trfan Habib, "Changes in Technology
in Medieval Tndia", Studies in History, 1 I ( I ), 1980, pp 25-26.
147 Chachnama, ed, Umar Daudpota, Delhis 1939, p 169.
148 The historical implications Of the cmergence of the Rajput horseman are
missing in most discussions Of thc period; but Coulboln, almost by chance,
draws a linguistic par.l11cl betweell thc rajaputra and the "knighl" (CSSH, X
(3), 1962, p 369 n).
149 On the emergence of the Rajputs, see B D Chattopadhyaya, "Or;gin of the
Rajputs", IHR, II1 (l), pp 59-82.
150 On the groups of villages, many of which survive as traditional territorial
division under different Rajput clans, see Irfan Habib, "Distribution of
Landed Property in Pre-British India", Enquiry, N S It (3) (1965), p 42,
where other references will be found.

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THE PEASANT IN 1NDIAN HISTORY 47
despots: the village headmen (khots and muqaddazs) who rode horses,
wore fine clothes and chewed betel-leaf in the Doab n the early 14th
century could well have been sucll proto-Rajputs.15l The local power
and rights that these 'feudal' potentates and warriors carved out for
themselves long survived the politics withiTl which they had originated.
It was largely out of these deeply entrenched elements that the
zamindar class of medieval India, continuing into modern times, was
Cretted. 1 52
Our evidence tends to show the peasant as no more than a pliant

victim while his superiors fought it out for the control of the surplus
he produced. This may however well be due to limitations of vur
evidence. The epigraphic prasastis of rulers were not likely to dwel
on agrarian revolts. We owe to R S Slaarma the identification
of one peasant uprising in the 11th century. Tlle Kaivartas, tradi-
tionally a low 'mixed' jati of lJoutmen, 153 held plots of land on sonue
service tenure in North Bengal. A literary account (RamacXlai i-tcz) says
that upon being subjected to heavy taxation they revolted. fighting
naked with bows and arrows and riding on buffaloes. They dWfeated
and killed one Pala ruler and forced another to mobilise all his vassals,
before they could be subdued (c.1075).l54 The revolt was thus also a
caste revolt: the Kaivartas might have bnen trying to throw oS their
social disabilities as well. A later Sena ruler of Bcngal (Ballalase1la,
c 1159-1185) is indeed said to have made a 'clean casto of the lowly
Kaivartas'.l 55
The A1edieval Peasantry

The degree of changelessness in the conditions of the pasantry
can always be overstressed. One should, on the other hand, also be
wary of assuming change just because of an alteration in tl1c quality
of record, as happens when we move into the 13tl1 century. It is,
therefore, perhaps best to rbserve judgement on the isslle of perio-
disation in the history of the peasantry until certain basic matters are
first clarified.
The first question to bc elucidated is whetller there developed
any internal factors for changA in the mode of p>asant production and
151 Barani, TarikXl-iFiruz-Shahi, FsP 287-288, 291.

152 I have tried to trace this tranformatioll (13tll-14th celaturies) in The
C'aslbridge Ecoslos?lic History of India, \'ol 1, ed. T laycIauelll lri (lnd 1 'Ialoib,
Cambiidge, 1982, pp s4-60. -rhe l redominlnce olf tha Ra jptlts amolng the
zamindar clans recor(Ied against indiv dual pargana* in Akbal ss ampire with
numbers of retainers (horse atld foot) (Ain-i-Akbal i: Accotl;:llt ol tha l wesve
Subas3 is proof enough of the 'Indian-fcudal' roots of th;It class.
153 Azlanussr1riti, X, 34 ( tr. Buhler) p 410.
154 R S Sharma, Indian Felrdaliss7l, p 298. cr R D Ba;1Cl ji, The Pulas of Bengal,
reprint, Varanasi, 1973, pp 44-5 1 .
155 H C Ray TAle Dynastic Histor) of Northern lndir>, Calctltta, 1931, I, p 364.

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48 SOCIAL SC'IENTIST
structure of the village community. Among such possible factors,

agricultural technology deserves prime consideration. Undoubtedly
the intrusion of Islam into lndian history opened the gates a little
wider for the admission of techniques received from external sources.ts6
There were accordingly certain improvements in agricultural tools and
methods, wh.ich can be ascribed lo the medieval centuries.
A notable advance seems to have been made with the provision
of right-angled gearing to the Indian 'saqiya' or araghatta (water-wheel
with potgarland), the fully developed device being described as in use
in the Panjab and cis-Sutlej territory by early 16th century. It is
almost certain that the geared wheel had been diffused within the
previous two or three centuries.157 Its diffusion should have
contributed considerabty to irrigation in the Indus basin and Rajasthan.
The cementjng lime which arrived with the Muslims should have made
indigo extraction easier by providing water-proof walls for indigo
vats.158 Liquor distillation established by the end of the 13th century
added a new and admittedly widespread agricultural industry.t59
Introilaction of sericultureby the l5th century made Bengal one of
the great silk-producing regic)ns of the world in the 17th.l6° After
the discovery of the New World, India received important new crops,
such as maize and tobacco whose cultivation belongs to the 17th
century.16l Grafting practices spread too in the same century, result-
ing in the improvement of some fruits, notably the oranges.162
These developments are sufficient to shake any assumptions
about static agriculture, but taken in the aggregate they would not
amount even remotely to a technological revolution. In general, they
contributed to the extension and reinforcement of peasant agriculture,
not to its subversion or tlansformation.
Nor did the fundamental social relationships within the village
156 Cf Kosambi's general observation about "Islamic raidersbreaking down

hidebound custom in the adoption and transmission of new techniques"
(Introdlletiosl-, P 370)-
157 l he evidence is presented in my address, "Technology and Society in the
1 3th and 14th centuries", Proceedings of the lndian History Congress
(Varanasi, 1969),pp 149-1S3, 161, tobe read with the additions and revision
made by me in sSChanges in Technology in Medieval India", Studiesin
History, ]I (1) (1980), pp 18-20), ln the latter paper (p 19), I noted evidence
for thc potgarlaxld in lndia from the 6th ar.d 7th centuries. Lallanji Gopal
brings together many passages bearing on the araghatta In his Aspectsof
Histor of Agriculture in Ancient lndia, Varanasi, 1980, pp 114-168; but his
insistence that gearing is pre-medieval seems excessive pleading.
153 Studies i/l History. 11 (l) p 22.
] 59 lbid, FsP 2 >-24.
160 Ibid, pp -8-29. Silks other than mulberry, such as tasar and eri, have pro-
bably a much older history in India.
161 1rfan Habib, 'sTechnology and Economy of Mughal 1ndia", IESHR, XV1I
(14, p 4.
16) lbid,pi84-6.

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THE PEASANT IN 1NDIAN HISTORY q9
undergo any visible change. Islam made almost no impression on the

caste system. Indeeds except for a very low-keyed disapproval by the
scientific-minded Alberuni, medieval Islam produced no critique or
condemnation of the system.163 Caste thus remained as prominent an
element of village life as in any previous period.l64 Upon their con-
version Muslim peasant communities also tended to practise endogamy,
tl2ough a greater degree of occupational and status mobility seems to
have been tolerated among WIuslims in general.165
The relations of the peasants with other elements of the rural
population also remained basically unaltered. This was especially
true in respect of the menial castes. No symy)athy is wasted on them
in Indo-lslamic texts. The Arab conqueror of Sind, Muhammad bin
Qasim approved the humiliating restraints that had been placed by
the previous regime upon the Jats, very similar to those imposed
upon the Chandaias by the Mantfsmriti. 166 The subjection of the
menial proletariat to the caste peasantry thus continued practically
unabated throughout medieval times. The occupation set for castes
like Chamars, Dhanuks and Dhirs at the end of Nlughal rule was quite
firmly that of "working in the fields of zamindars and peasants.''16'
It was owing to this continuity from earlier times that the menial and
depressed castes formed about a guarter or a fifth of the rural popu-
lations when censuses and surveys began to make a cotlnt of them and
163 After a fairly sympathet c cpeculation on the caste system (even pointing
to an Iranian paraXlel) Alberuni remarks: 'We Muslims, of course, stand
entirely on tha other side of the question, considering ail men as equal,
except in piety" (Alberuni's Inxlia, lr. Edward C Sachau, I ondonb l910, 1,
p 100). fiuch cowlnterpositior] czf the theoretical equality in Islam and the
caste system stands u1lique in medieval literattlre; and clearly Alberuni
sll;as by r.o means representing the general trend. To most Mus]im writers
(of whom Barani, author of the Tarikh-i-Firzzzshahi, 1357, is the coutstanding
spokesman), a stable hierarchy was the most praiseworthy social ideal.
164 *'ln our countries the people who are nomads of the steppes are dist n-
guished by names of diiTerent tribes; but here (in Hindustan) people settled
in the country and vil]ages are distinguished b names of tribes" tBabur,
Baburnan1cz, Br Mus, MS, Or 714 f 410a; cf A Di Beveridge's tr, lf, p 518).
Kosambi would have appreciated this analogy with tribes.
165 See D lbbetson's remarks on the condttions in Western Panjab, "where

1slam has largely superseded Brahminisll<'' (Panjab Castes, Lahore, 1916,
Pp 10-11).
166 Chachnama. ed U Daudpota, pp 2l4-216; these pages and also pp 47-48 for
the earlier disabilities. A laler Arab Governor reechoed Manu in insisting
that the Jatis shotlld be accompanied by dogs (Balaztlri, Ftuh al-Buldan,
port i on tr EI I i o t a nd Dowson, Ili s torY o f I ndia as ro1d by its o wn Historizles,
1, London, lS67, p 129, Cf Manu, X, 51 (tr Buhler, p.4i6).
167 ColJamesSkinner, Tashrihul Aqwael (Al)1825), MS Britisll Mlls Add,

27, 255, , 187a 188a. This uPork describas very acctlrately the castes and
their traditions in the Haryana region at t le time.

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50 SOCIAL SCIENTXST
describe their conditions an the 19th century.168

Strong survivals attest with similar force to the continuance
through medieval times of the fixed positions of the village artisans
and servants. This is corroboratad by documentary evidence. The
balahar (low-caste village porter) represented the lowliest tax-paying
land-holder in the illage in the eyes of Zia Barani (14th century);169
he must thus have been holding a small plot in recompense of his
services. There were similarly the twelve balutas in Maharashtra
villages, whose customary land-holdings and other ri gtlts are the
subject of a valuable study by Fukazawa, based on pre-British 18th
century evidence.170 In fact the system was universal.17l
It can, therefore, hardly be disputed that the caste structure of
the village and its attending elements as formed in ancient India conZ
tinued to function without recognisable change till the 18th century.
Apparently, then, there were no internal processes at work to disturb
the social structure of the villae.
But the surroundings in which the structure stood, were altered
in certain crucial respects. It is this alteration, in the 1lature of the
ruling class and the pattern of distribution of the surplus, which, by
its eSects OIl the conditions of life of the peasantry, provides the
justification for demarcating the medieval from the ancient.
The urban orientation of lslam, practically from its inception,
was undoubtedly an important factor in furthering a consciously town-
centred culture. 172 Whether or not this provided the primary impulse,
there did occur during the early centuries of Islam a considerable
growth of commerce and craft production a11 over wcstern and central
168 See an important paper by D Kumar, S'Caste and landlessness in South

India", CSSH, IV (3) (1962), pp 338-363; also her book, LnsS aslat Caste in
South India, Canlbridge, 1965, esp p 161.
169 TarSh-iFaruz-shahi, p 287. On balahar, see H M Elliot, 7ttIemoirs of the
History, Folklore and Distribution of Races in the North-western Provinces..., ed
John Beames, London, 1869, 1I, p 249; alld Irfan Habib, Agrarian System of
Mltghal India, pp 120 - I 21 .
170 Hiroshi Fukazawa,"Rural servants in the 18th century Maharashtrian
Village Demiurgic or Jajmani System?" Hitotsabashi Jourzlal of Economics,
X1l (2) (1972), pp ]4-40.
171 It i s practically found almost wherever one looks. xvVhen the English tem-
porarily took possession of Broach (Gujarat) in 1776, the Collector
reported: "That a certain proportion of the land of each village is
requisite to be set apart for the maintenance of such artiScers and
labourers as are absolutely necessary for the common services of the
village is according to the ctzstom of the country true." (Se/ections from the
letters..., in the Bombay Secretariat, Honze Series, ed G W Forrest, Bombay,
1887, l1, p 184).
172 ln the corlfrontation of town and bedouin in ltrab a, Is}am was hostile to
the bedouin (cf the Quran, IX, 97, 95). See F Lokkegaar, lslasnic Taxation
i71 the Classic Periocl, Copenhagen, 1950, p 32.

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THE PEASANT IN INDIAN HISTORY st
Asia.173 This was accompanied by tbe formation of large polities

each unified under a strong despotism (under the Caliph, then under
the Sultan).
The Ghorian invaders brought these cultural and political
traditions to India. The invaders and their successors owed theit
supremacy to the effective combination of their mounted archers in
contrast to the dispersed strength of the Rajput soldiery.l74 In one
sense, it was a triumph of centralised polity.175 Tbe tendency towards
centralisation was reinforced by the coming of gunpowder and artellerys
whose first dramatic result was Babur's victory at Panipat (1526).176
The centralisation expressed itself pre-eminently in the organi-
sation of transferable territorial revenue assignments (iqtas in the
Sut tanat e, yagiJ s in the Mughal Empire), a system borrowed enti rely in
its fundamentals from the Islamic world.177 As a result, members of
the ruling class (formally officers or nobles of the king) were prevented
from growing into permanent heredi tary local potentates so long as
the central organisation, based on tlle King's court, functioned nor-
mally. This system too implied thc concentration of the nobles and
their troops in the tOWllS from where they exercised control over rural
territory, vvithin which they tllemselves possessed no independent or
customary ties.
ln an important contribution, Professor Mohammad Habib
described the change which took place upon the estabfisiment of the
Sultanate as an 4 'urban revolution", followed subsequently by a "rural
revolution''.l78 One may differ with him, as I venture to do, on the
173 E Ashtor, A Soc.:cll and Econonlic History of the Near East ill tlle Middle Ages,
is a competent survey with useful references. A useful gllide to conditions
in the lslanzic East is G Le Strange's classic work, Lands of tAle Eastern
Caliphates Cambridge, l 905 (repri nted, 1930. . .).
174 That the essential difference between tl1e illvader and defender was one
betueen mounted archer and swordsman or lancer was first pointed out by
Simon Digby, Horse and Elephant in the Del/li Sultanate, Oxford, 1971, pp 15 ff.
See also I Habib, Studies in History, II (l), pp 25-27.
175 Behind this need lay the hesitation of the Sultans in paying their own
cavalry troopers by assionments of villages instead of in cash. See Barani,
pp 163-164, 220-221, 303, 324, 553; Aflt, Tartkh-i F*uzshahi, Bib Ind, Cal-
cu t {a, 1850, pp 94-96.
176 Cf V Barthold, lran, tr G K Nariman, ed I H lhabanala, in Posthumous

Works of G K Nariman, Bombay, 1935, pp 142- I 43.
177 This immensely fruitftll insight belongs to W H Morelat1d. See his Agrarian
SJstem of Mos/ent India, Cambridge, 1929, especially pages 289-292. The
systen as it worked in the Delh Sultanale is also discussed in theCam-
bridge Economic Histor> of India (CEHI), ], pp 68-75. For the Mughal
Empire, see my Agrarian System of Mughal India, pp 257-297, and M Athar
Ali, The Mlg1zal Nobility under AurZ7gzeb, Bombay, 1966, pp 95.
178 lntroduction to a new edition of El;iot and Dowson, History of Intlis as told
b) its olsXn Historians, J1, Aligarh, 1952, pP 36-82.

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52 SOCIAL SCIENT1ST
extent of Jiberation of artisans that the first process implied, and,

indeed, on the designation of the two processes.179 But the intercon-
nection that he saw between the conquests, the centralisation, the
urban growth and the changes in the sharing of the agrarian surplus,
must still stand.
The shift of the balance in favour of the town as against coun-
try is an important element of medieval Indian economic history. The
evidence for the Sultanate, literary as well as numismatic, suggests a
fairly noticeable upsurge in urban life.180 It is likely that in the
Mughal Empire the urban population amounted to as much as 15 per
cent of the total, a distinctly higher proportion than at lhe end of the
19th century.18l This urban growth chiefly xested on the surplus
extracted by the ruling class in the form of the land-tax, whic;h was
mainly distributed among it s members and their dependents and
retainers living within the towns.182
Tlle medieval land-tax, k1zarclj or mal, came into its own with
Alauddin Khalji (1-96-1316). Until then, except in some localities,
the Sultans or tlleii (lssignees l1ad taken the hlta-i as a kind of tribute
exlorted from the chiefs of the defeatcd recimes. It was now set at
llalf the produce, takcn by application of .ln f:slimatcd crop-rate on
measured land.l83 In termincalogy as well as in its character, the tax
is essentially similar to the single lleKlvy k/laeaj of the Islanaic
COUIltrieS.184 Once inStitutcd ill tlle Sultanate,185 it continued in tlle
Mughal Empsre at about tlle SAlllC magllilUde, sIpplOctillg tllC liSits
179 My oWJl views ale set out in "Econolllie Histoly of thc Dellli ,Suitanate-
an lntelprctatiol", 1HR, 1V (2), pp 287-988.
180 1 hae presclllee1 the csitlelnce ila llIR, 1V (2), pp 'S9 lr. lt is posoiblc tl}at
there was a modest rexixs21 of commercc and tosstns before the Ghorian
conquests to which Sharma drasvs attention (I1lrli(zel Fetld(llislzl, pp 942-262).
B D Chattopadhyaya, "Trade and Urban Centres in E.lrly Medieval India",
IHR, 1(2), pp 203-2l9, even contcsts Sharma's thesis of the earlier urban
decline; btlt it is difElcult to evaluate the evidence lle adduces, sil)ce it is
not Sharma's position that 1he towns completely disappeared after the
Guptas or tllat no new towns X ere founded at a11. l hese questions may
ultimately be resolved more precisely by archaeology; it Bould seem, hov-
ever, that the thirteenth century does mark an inimense extension of *1rban
sites whose remains have survised.
181 Cambridge L:C'0Z1007iC History of lezdia, J, pp 167-I7J.
182 On this relat.onship, my own argument is presented in "Potentialit.es of

Cap talist Development in tile Economy of Mughal lndia", Ezzqltiry, NS, II1
(3), pp 1-56, esp pp 22-36.
183 For Alauddin Khaljiss measures, the basic sorce is Barani, pp 2X7-288.
184 Moreland (Agrariael Systefn of Moslem India, pp 16-18) held tilat in its appro-
ximation to "economic rent", the tax was essentially lslamic in origin,
while sn its being fixed at a unifcerm chare irrecrective of crop, it had
Hindu antecJdeots.
185 For a clear-headed account of agrarian taxation under the Sultanate, see
W H Morcland, op cit, pp 2t-G5, 1 oSer a description in CEHI, X, pp 60-()8.

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l19vl3CIrf aknsaHnaHbiab,ibA,gAragrairniazSntysStyesmtem.nl. . . . . . ., .p ,3p2 -32t 130.5-231!6. Se also the sevente nth century
of 'economic rent'.l86 The difference between this tax and the pre-
medieval assemblage of a "formidable number of taxes and cesses" lay
in the tax being a single claim on the bulk of the surplus; there was
probably tittle change in the size of the total burden that the peasant
had borne previoUSly.ls7 This is besides the fact that those who
appropriated the surplus through tlle land-tax represented an econo-
mic and social element of a different character from the previous
appropriators .
The imposition of the land-tax (usually called mal an Mughal
times) re-lnoulded the relations of the peasant with his superiors.
Since the tax claimed the bulk of the surplus for the King (and his
assignees), the fiscal claims of the previous aristocracy could not be
permitted. Thus the prohibition of the khot's cesses (1tuquq-i khoti,
qisnSat) by the Sultans,188 and of the various cesses cf zanlindars by
the Mughals. 189
The land-tax was no longer seen in the nature of tribute but as
a levy directly assessable upon each cultivator, whether he was a khot
or balahar.l90 In the Mughal Empire the insisteslce that the tax be
assessed on each cultivator name-by-name (asamEwar) pervades revenue
literature.19l From this the next step was also some times taken: a
claim on the peasant's person. True, says a 14th century document,
the peasants are "free-born" (hurr-asl), but their obligation to pay
tax requires that they be bound to the villages where they have been
cultivating the soil.192 This right of the authorities to force the
peasants cultivate the land, restrain tllem from leaving it, and bring
them back if they did so, is also asserted on various occasions during
the Muglla1 period.193 Finally, if the peasants failed to pay the tax,
they wouNl beconze subject to raids and enslavement by the King's
troops. Evidence for these measures begins right from the 13th
century;194 the same measures were almost routine in the Mughal
Empire 195
186 Cf Irfan Habib, Agrarian SAste1wl of M/lghal India, pp 190-196, and the refe-
rences givell there. There has been much work since then on revenue
administratlon, but it las tended uniformly to confirm this finding.
187 Harbans Mtlkhia seems to me to miss this point when he says that the Sul-
tans in 'mposing their heavy land-tax xvere merely following eatlier prece-
dents ( Jollrnal of Peasant Studies, VIII (3), 198 l, p 292).
188 Barani, pp 287, 288, 291-420.
l89 Irfan Halzib, Aglarian Systelzl of A{ugAlal India, p 150 and n.
190 Barani, p 287.
192 InsAza-i Mahrl, ed S A Rashid, Lahore, 19o5, pp 61-63,
documents from Gtljarat discusseel by B R Grover in Proceedings of the

Indian History Congress, Dellli session (1961), pp 152,155.
194 Cf CEHl, 1, p 90.

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S4 SOCTAL SCIENTIST
Clearly, the medieval land-tax generated its own pressure upon

all the rural classes. But in the interest of surplus-appropriation
itselfit was expedient to rnaintain the inherited structure of rural
society and utilise it for collecting the land-tax. Alauddin Khalji
would tax the khots and muqaddams (village headmen) and also force
them to collect tbe land-tax.196 Ghtyasuddin Tughluq (1320 1325),
however, found this impracticable, and exempted the two worthies
from the tax on their lands to compensate them for their services.l97
Here we see how the ex;gencies of the sstuation were bound to
lead to a 'llistorical compromise'. The hereditary magnates of the
days of Indian 'feudalism' would be recognised as holders of certain
rights over the- territory controlled by them, and be allowed to have
armed retainers. In return, they were obliged to render certain
services to the authorities, notably that of collecting the tax. After
an inevitable process of conflict, confusion of rights and nomenclatllre,
the class obtained the universal designation of zamindar in the Mughal
Empire.198 The terms of the 'compromIse' varied from region to
reg;on, but everywhere the zamindars and other superior right-holders
would receive a minor share in the revenue collected from the territory
placed 1lnder their rights (10 per cent of the land-revenue in Northern
India, 25 per cent in Giijarat), and they were in practice permitted
some other levies on the peasants, and other rights of pecuniary
benefit. 199
A triangular relationship thus came to exist between the pea-
santry, the zamindars and the ruling class. During the first half of
the 18th century Qazi Muhammad Ala wrote a tract on land-rights in
India. His work has not received much attention so far, although he
is practically unique among Muslim jurists in taking into account
the realities of agrarian relations in India.
According to him, before i'the conquests of Islam", the rajas,
"whose descendants are called Rajputs", used to realise kAzara; (land-
tax) from the peasants. The latter out of respect and devotion to
the rajas, used to acknowledge them as "proprietors of all land"
and regarded themselves as their "cultivators" only. Although with
the Islamic conquests the rajas lost their sovereignty, the Sultans let
them remain as chiefs (rausa) over the peasants; "they are now called
196 Barani, pp 287-288, 291. On the kAtot, see IESHR, IV (3), pp 212-2l3.
197 Ibid, p 430.
198 I omit giving detailed references here, because :1 have little subslantial
information to add to 1ny description of zamindars in Agrarian System
pp 136-lB9. See also an important paper by S Nurul Hasan, ''Zamindars under
the Mughals" in Land Control alld Social Structure ill ledian History,
ed L E Frykenburg, London, 1969.
199 A discussion of the zamindars' share in the surplus occurs in myAgrarian
System..., pp 144-154, S Moosvi argues in favour of a higher share of the
zamindar fIESHR, XI (3), pp 359-374).

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202 Irfan Habib, Agrarian Systesn . . . . . . , p . 1 tS, l41-14 .
THE PEASANT IN INDIAN HISTORY ss
zamindars". (In this the Qazi is historically correct) 200 The zamindars
have been given the task (merely) of collecting the tax from the
peasants. Yet because the ancestors of the peasants had recognised
the pre-Islamic potentates (rausa) as proprietors, they continue to re-
cognise their descendants, the zamindars, as proprietors as well. In fact,
they permit the zamindars to evict at will aIly of the peasants (riaya)
and lease out the land to someone else. The Qazi objects to these
pretensions of the zamindars because, he says, the land-tax (snaZlslll-i
arazi) is levied not on the zamindars, but on the peasants. But since
the peasants (harisan) have never claimed to be "proprietors" they
too cannot be so recognised. Indeed, slnce the land-tax, tl1ough set
at half the produce, exceeds that lim1t, it is not the khclraj of Islamc
Law, but rent (ujarat). This applies equally to fields cultivated by the
zamindars themselves. The ownership of land belongs, therefore, t()
the Treasury. In other words, he pronounces in conclusion what was
regarded by European travellers of tbe 16th and 17th conturies as an
undisputed principle, viz, the entire land in India "is ill the possession
(tasurruf) of the King". It was true, said the Qazi, that the zamindars
bought and sold "villages, inctuding cultivated lands", on which they
claimed ownership r,ights; but his opinion is that this practice was
based on "false" claims.20l
The Qazi's own opinions are less important than his depiction
of the actualities in which he is quite acute. The peasants admitted
themselves to be tenants-at-will of zamindars who were sproprietors',
but not the rent-appropriators; the nearest equivalent of rent was, on
the other hand, claimed through the King's tax. Such complexities
would defy any legal theory; they could be explained only as the out-
come of six centuries of history.
There is also possibly one piece of over-simplification in Qazi
Muhammad Ala's description. The zamindars were not universal
lntermediaries. The existence of peasant-held (raiyati) areas was a
very important aspect of the agrarian system.202 This seems to be
the main reason why Mughal revel1ue documents so often omit any
2.00 He is correct even in saying that thn pre-Islamic potentat wer_ recognised
as land-owners. Rautas are fotlnd selling or 1nortgaging theil lands in two
13th century inscriptions from U P. The Jaunpur brick inscription of 1Zl7
has been published by V S Agrawala in Jourflal of UP Historical Society, XVIlI
(1 & 2)1945, pp 196-20l; the Kasrak insclipfion of 12o7 is baing published
by my colleague Dr Pushpa Prasad, to whom .[ .m indebted for th> infor-
mat ion.
201 Risala Ahkam-i Arazi, Aligarh MSS, Abdus Salaln 'Arab;ya 331-10, f} 43v-621;
Lytton 'Arabiya Ma;hab (2), 62. ff, 53v-62. For his biography (stlch as is
known) see Abdul Hai Hasani, Nazhtltu-I Khawatir, Hyderabad (DnX, l376/
1907, VI, p 278.

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S6 SOCIA L SCIENT 1ST
reference to zan1indars wbere we would otherwase expect them.203

These peasant-held areas might have originated simply because the
older potentates were destroyed or were unable to transform themselves
into zamindars, or because, as is more likely, even in the 'feudal'
centuries tbere were areas which were not held in hereditary right by
any potentate. The areas could also include new villages established
by older village communities or their splinters. But if there were no
zamindars in this apparently large though fragmented zone, there was
also a high degree of peasant stratification here.
In our di scussion of the earlier period we have seen that
peasant production almost ginvariably implies stratification inasmuch
as it requircs not only the peasant's own labour, but also demands,
as a 14th ccntury divine put it, scapital' (maya) in the form of seed, a
prslir of oxen, tools and implements.204 In multi-caste villages, caste
would rcinforce stratification, particularly when the higher castes
obtained concWssions in revenue rates.205 The land-revenue being a
regressive tax would in any case have fallen more heavily on the
smaller peasant. But this burden would be further exacerbated when,
in eScct contractingfor the wholevillage, "the great men"(kalantaran)
and muqadda;ns (headmen) shifted the revenue due on their own lands
to t he shoulders of the small peasants (reza riaya). 206 These
complaints, voiced jn official documents of the Mughal Empire,
remind us of the 14th century chronicler's reference to "the burden of
the strong fallin, on the xveak",20 just as the word- Kalantaran takes
us back to the 'great men' of tlle ancient Indian villa$e communities.
Differentistion of this kind was inherent in the taxalion system; but
it would be intensified the heavier the land-tax.
2G3 As a leSult, Mloaeland fAgrariaflSystemofMosZemiradia, pp 122-123) was

inclinud io equats thc M:lghal zamindar with vassal chief only. Cf also P
Saran, The PeXovincisl Governmentsof the MugAlc71s (1526-1658), Allahabad, 1941,
p 12.T & n, for a similar view.
204 Shaik Nasiruddin in his conversations, K/lairu-l Majalis, recorded (c 1354)
by Hamid Qalandar, ed K A Nizami, Aligarh, 1952, pp l40, 272; Land, being
abundant, ss 11ot considered a recluirenzenl (cE CEH1, I, p 48)
205 Evidencc of such concessional ratc, from eastern Rajasthan is presented in
Dilbagh Singh, ''Caste and tile Strtictule of Village in Eastern Rajasthan
during the Eighteenth Contury^', IHR, }.1 (2), pp 299 3 l l; by S P Gupta for
late 17ih century in Proceedings ot IndianHistoryCongress, Aligarh (1975)
sessiotl, pp 235-937; and by R P Rana, in lESHR, XVl1T (3 & 4), pp 291, 326.
The miras tenures of Maharaehtra are of a similar chazacter, alid such privi-
leged strata would bq found practically everywilere. In Northern Ctndia they
arc of.eAl called 'khlxd-hasht ' peasants.
406 Orignal text of Todar Mal's memorandum (Akbarnanwa, Br Mus Add 27, 247,
f 333b), where lhe great 1llen are denounoed as "bastards and tlle head-
strong"; Abul Fazl, A'in-i Akbari, cd, Blochmann, Bib Tnd, I, p 286; and
Aurannzeb's f;rmasl to Rasikdas, Art VI (prsnted in JASB, II (1906),
pp 223-25O.
207 Barani, p 287.

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209 Irfatl Habib, Agrarian System . . . . . . . . , p 236-240.
Until now we have mainly studied the impact of tax-collection 57

on tlle agrarian economy. The fact that in medieval India, thA
surplus was extracted mainly for consumption in the town by the
King and his revenue-assignees, meant that there was but rarely any
direct consumption of agricultural produce by the tax-appropriators.
Already by Alauddin Khalji's time (early in the 14th century) the
cash-nexus appears to have been fairly well established, so that the
Sultan's order that tax was to be collected in kind in certain areas is
specifically recorded.208 tn the Mughal Empire the cash-nexus was
almost universal; even when the tax was fixed in kind (under the crop-
sharing system), it was most often commuted into money paymentc.209
The circulation-cycle was completed when the merchants purchasing
agricultural produce from the villages, sold it in the towns into the
hands ofthose who where direct and indirect recipients of the tax-
money. This portion of agricultllral produce would naturally have a
much higher composition of high-value crops (e g, wheat, surgarcane)
and raw materials or industrial crops (e g, cotton, indigo) than the
portion left unsold in the villages.210 By one estimate, cotton and
sugarcane which occupied only 8 per cellt of the sown area in 'kharif
in pargana Malarna (Eastern Rajasthan) paid 32 per cent of the
revenue.2ll In other words, the crops that sold best were the high-
grade crops paying correspondingly high revenue rates and requiring
more water and labour and even some installations (indigo-vats,
sugar mills, etc). Clearly only the richer peasants could possibly
have the resources to raise such crops, and the profits accordingly
would atso be theirs. On the other hand, the poorer peasants would
not be able to raise the market crops, and would find it more difficult
to meet the revenue-demand. Inevitably, they would have to take
recourse to the usurer, and, given the high rates, would inevitably
be pauperised.212 Aurangzeb in afarman exempted from the jiziyn
"the small peasants (reza riaya) who engage in cultivation but depend
wholly on debt for their subsistence, seed and cattle".2l3
The control of the village tended to vest as before with the
higher strata. A late Persian manual on Mughal land-revenue
208 Barani, pp 305-306. C1 Moreland, Agrarian System of Moslem India, pp 37-38.

Elsewhere, Barani himself says that the peasants under the same Sultan sold
grain to merchants at fixed prices in order to pay the revenue, which must
then have been paid in cash (Barans, pp 304-305, 307).
210 The detailed argutnent for this isadvanced by me in Enquiry. NS, I:1I (3),
pp 32-36.
211 S N Hasan, K N Hasan atld S P Gupta, Proceedings of the :[ndian History
Congress, Mysore session (1966), pp 249, 263. Tables I dc Y.
2l2 See the data on agrazianusury in my article "Usury in Medieval India*',
CSSH, VI (4), pp 394-398.
213 Malikzada, Nigarllamcl-iMunshi (compiled 1684), Lucknow, 1884, p 139.

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S8 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
administratson describes the situation in the village {n these terms:
In every vtillage there are some muqaddams (headmen) who are the
proprietors of the village and hundreds of persons called asami pea-
sants, that is caltivators; the asami, with the approval of the
revenue-collector and the permission of those muqaddams, prepare
their fields, delimit them and cultivate the land, and pay the
revenue, as fixed at the beginning of the season, to the Government
through the muqaddams....
Most of the muqaddams, who organise their own (kwud-kasht)
cultivation, engage waz,e-labourers as servants, and set them to
agricultural work. Obliging them to do the ploughing, sowing,
reaping, and watering (of the field) from the wetl, they pay their
fixed wages, either in cash or kind. The crop of the ISeld belongs
to them, so that they are both muqaddams and asaM?is (in repect of
their khwud-kasht). ...214
Here we have a three-tier structure: the 'headmen' cultivating

svith hired labour; the mass of ordinary cultivators; and the wage-
labourers. This accords with much of what we know of the villages
ofthis period. A khasra document of 1796 from eastern Rajasthan
shows two patels (village headmen), each cultivating a larger acreage
than the bottom ten of the 38 willage peasants, all put together; one
patel raised seven crops, while each of the ten peasants grew only one
coarse food crop during that season (kharif).215 The landless labourers
do not naturally enter this record.
We can see here how the stratification, intensilSed as it was by
commodity production, still remained deeply imbedded in the village
as a unit. The fiscal and economic entity of the village was shown by
the financial pool (fota) out of which revenue payments and "village
expenses" were met.216 Cultivators coming from other villages were
always strangers, and, classed separately as paikasht, were obliged to
settle terms with the village headmen.217 The vitlage, with its
customary mechanism of fiscal and social management, to which we
apply the term "community ', came under only a still more rigorous
control of the upper strata as a result of the increased diSerentiation
we have been describing. The customary social integument continued
to support a sub-exploltation, which had probably originally itself
214 Chhatar Mal, Diwan-pasand, Br. Mus. Or,-2011,ff7b-8a. The work was
compiled sometime before 1824, in the Doab area.
215 Khasra document discussed by S P {}upta, Medieval lndia a Miscellany,
Bombay, 1V, pp 1 68-178.
216 Evidence of Mughal documents on this is set out in Agrarian System
pp 125-127.
217 Cf Satish Chandra, "Some Aspects of lndian Village Society in b;orthern
lndia during the 18th Century", 1HR, 1 (1), pp 51-64.

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2129 Cf AAggrarian System . . . . . , p p103-1 1304.
THE PEASANT IN 1NDIAN HISTORY
95
served as its basis. 218

Once the position of the 'headmen' became visibly profi-
table, it could become saleable in the same way as zamindari right. In
time, the muqaddas1wa right could silently grow into zamindari.2l9 Both
these phenomena are illustratwd by the documents of the Bilgram-
Shamsabad area (15th and 16th centuries) which I was able to study.220
The converse of the process would be the sale of a village by its
peasants to a zamindar, of which too there is an example in the same
set of documents.22l In either case, there is an extension of zamindari
right over the raZyati zone. Undoubtedly then there must have been a
considerable mixing on the periphery of the lower zamindars and the
upper peasants.
The medieval peasantry was thus beset by a dual exploitation,
of the ruling class (King and mtlqtislyagirdars) and the zamindars, and
by an intensfied pace of internal d;Serentiation from fiscal and market
factors. From what we can establish, the source of these twin develop-
ments vvas essentially external, namely, the flow of the surplus to the
towns forced by the medieval land-tax.
For most peasants, life was a battle for bare survival. The 17th
century, for which we happen to have more detailed information than for
any earlier century, witnessed recurring cycles of famine with immense
mortalities.222 Nature's calamities underlined man's oppression. To
the peasant, the heaviest burden that he had to bear was the land-tax,
an arbitrary confiscation of such a large part of his produce. It was,
therefore, natural that payment of the land-tax should be at the root
of all major social conflicts involving the peasantry. It is a remarkable
but understandable fact that references to armed conflicts on any
large scale between the zamindars and the peasants, let alone between
the upper and the ordinary peasants, are very rare The land-tax
represented the prancipal contradiction; all other conflicts of interest
seemed secondary.
Peasant Revolts
Pe.asant uprisings span medieval India; their immediate
218 1 am conscious that J see the effects of commodity production on the

village community rather differently from how these had seemed to me in
Agrarian System..., pp 128-129. Thi s i , perhaps, partly because my concep-
tion of the community has also changed since then.
220 They are analysed and calendared in IESHR, IV (3), pp 205-132; see
especially p 211-2i7.
221 Ibid, pp 215-216. The Kachhis and Chamarsare termed the "ancientmaSikss'
of the willage in the document (No. 16 of A D 1611). Presumably, they were
simply its inhabitants, forced to 'sell' their village *pon an inability to pay
the revenue.

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SOCIAL SC1ENTIST
60
provocatinn seems uniformly to have been the dema

land-revenue.
A widespread rebellion occurred in the Doab abou

mad Tughluq (1325-1351) increased the revnnue dem
which"the weak and resourceless peasants were
prostrate, while the rich peasants who had some r
turned rebels".223 When the Sultan sought to pun
muqaddams, by killing or blinding them, those who
bands and fled into the jullgles''. Thc Sultan's tro
the jungles and killed evcry olle whom they fc)und".
This describes thb cause and course of tl1e th
medieval uprising. In 1622, for example, Jahangir
that the villagers (ganlvaraZ) and cultivators (11luzari
(eastern) side of thc river Jamuna constantly ongage
sheltered behind dense jungles and talstllesses, diEc
their days in rebellion and defiance, not paying tl
tlle jagirdars". An army was thereupon despatche
revolt "with slaughter, enslavement and rapine'.225
At some stage, or from the beginning, the p
tended to merge with the zcZlZlinflalsw conflict with
over their share of the surplus. Already in tllc 14th
was clubbing together "the peasants (litcrally villagers
zamindX*" who "p;ly revenuc only wllen faccd with t
army and tlle thrust of thc dagger".226 In the Doab r
the kllots and ENUqCUdgaZ115 led "the bands", as we h
ot these could well have becn proto-zalwlinciars.
Int11e revolts that occurredduringthe 17thcen
dars' uprisngs tended eO feed on pe.lsant unres
peasant rcvolts in Inany swreas.227 The Doab vvith th
area, again, serves for an example. Th e pe.lsant u
earlier times form a prelude to the revolt of the Jat p
leadership of a succession of zamiJlciars228 The Ja
formal terms a successful one, ending in the estab
Bharatpur State. It resulted in a very great expansion
in tlle Doab at the expensc of other zamindar clans, an
possible that a number of upper Jat peasants moved
223 Ba raD i . pp 472 -473 .

224 lbid, pp 479-480.
225
ppTuzuk-i-Jclhangiri,
375-376. ed. Saiy id Ahmad, Ghazipur and A
226 Insha-i Mahru, op cit, p 75.
227 See my Agrarian System of Mughal India, pp 333-351.
228 Ibid, pp 339-342. The zamietdar-aspect of the Jat revo
R P Rana in a very detailed and informative article based
records (noxv at the Rajasthan Archives, B,kaner), "Agra
Northern India during the late 17th and Early lSth C
XV11l (3 & 6), pp 287-326.

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THE PEASANT 1N 1NDIAN HISTORY
16
zctfninblczes. It had no other sequel as far as the ordinary peasants

were eoneerned. As for tlle menial eastes, the attitude was the
traditional one: Stlrajmal 44seized a number of Chamars (tanners),
whn are called the menials of the Hindus, from different villages",
and set them to guard the ditch at Bharatpur.229 They were obvaously
considered mere chattel.
It is to be consadered how far the Maratha power in its for-
matic)n in the 17th century fed on peasant unrest. The Maratha chiefs
w*.re ciearly of ZaZ11illC{a6 OrigillS.230 Yet their arnced strength was
based on a constant aeeession to them of peasallt-soldiers, tlle bargis,
who lefl their villages to eseape oppression and devasation from the
Mughals as well as the Maralhas.
It ealne to be represented (to Aurangzeb) that the Marathas

obtained eollaboratioll from the peasants (nuzarian) of the Inzperial
dominions It was lherefore ordered that tlle horses and weapons
found in every village should be eonfiscated. When this happened
in man villages, the peasants providing themselves wilh horses and
arms jo.ined the Marathas.23l
A later writer (c 1761) aecordingly asserted that the army Of

the Marathas "eonsists mostly of low-born people, like peasants,
shepherds, earpenters ilnd eobblers, while the army of the Muslims
comprises mostly noblcs and gentlemen"; and he ascribed the Maratha
sueeesses to this eause.232
The ecBnditions of tl1e peasal1ts did not improvc UpOIl the
sueeesses of tlle Maratl1a chicfs; but it is possible tllat here too
eertain warriors of peasant oriS,in joined llle privileged rural strata,
and the miras tenures in Mal1arashtra were eonsidevably enlarged,233
The position of the Kunbis, the inferior peasants, seems to have
largely remained as miserable as before.
There are two other uprisings which deserve particular nottce,
because here peasant revolts combined with religious movements. The
movements are those emanating from the grea1 monothelstic preaching
of the 16th century, associated with Kabir, Nanak, Raidas and other
teachers. These teachers employed the language of the people chiefly
229 Saiyid Ghulam Ali Khan, Intadus Sll'adat, Naval Kishore, t897, p S5.
230 See Sati sl} Chandra, "Social Backgrollnd to tlle Rise of the Maratha
N1Ovement during thc 17tll Century", IESHR, X (3) 197 (3), pp 209-217, and
P V Ranade, 'Feudal Content of Maharashtra Dharma", IHR, I (1),
pp 44-50. Cf Agrarian Syslem..., pp 349-350.
231 Bhimsen, Nuskha-i DilkusAza, Br hAus Or 23, f 139 p-b.
232 Mir Ghulam Ali Azad lSilgrami, Khizana-iAmira, Kanpur, 18,1, p 49.
233 I forn1 this impression from H Fukazawa, "Land and Peasants in the
Eighteenth Century Maratha Kingdom", SIitotsubashi Journal of Ecozlol1lics,
V1 (l), June 1965.

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62 SOCIAL SCIENT1ST
to propagate submission to God; but their teaching tended towards

social egalitarianism, since they condemned ritual and caste obser-
vance. Most of the teachers belonged to the low jatis. Namdev, a
calico-printer; Kabir, a weaver; Raidas, a scavenger; Sain, a barber;
Dadu, a cotton-carder; Dhanna, a Jat peasant.234 In thu verses of Kabir
and Arjan, God's faithful worshipper appears as a peasant as well as
a village headman.235 The movement undoubtedly represented the urge
of a number of low-ranking classes to rise in the social scale. Its
openness to the menial castes is its outstanding achievement, practi-
cally unprecedented in our history.
The Satnamis were a sect belonging to this movement, as their
scripture makes clear. Their revolt in 1672 in the Narnaul region shook
the Mughal Empire. A contemporary Hindi poem represented them
as comprising "a crore of ganwars (villagers)",236 and the quasi-official
chronicler, Saqi Mustaidd Khan concedes that in battle they repeated
the scenes of the Mahabharata.237
The composition of the sect is of much interest. Mamuri says
they were peasants and also carried out sCtrade in the manner of
baqqaZs (banyas) of small capital".238 There was therefore the
possibility of some peasants seeking to enter the trading profession,
and acquiring the status of banyas. Saqi Mustaidd Khan says that thear
ranks {ncluded menials of all description, "goldsmiths (?), carpenters,
sweepers, and tanners",239 and Isardas Nagar seems to confirm this
when he speaks at some length ol the filthiness and impurity of tlle
community's customs, their eating pork and familiarily with dog.240
Here, then, we possibly sce 'menial' clements aspiring to be recognised
as peasants under the protection of a casteless community.
The Satnamis were defeated and crushed. But the Sikhs were
successful, and they offer us the other uprising wl1ere peasants appear
as rebels under the monotheistic leadership. It was recognised by an
intelligent observer of the mid- 17th century that the Jats had
acquired a predominant position in the Sikh community-and "Jat",
he adds, means "a villager, a rustic" in the dialect of the Panjab.241
234 The bold assertioll that access to God could be acquired by men of such
low birth is made in beautiful verses composed in Bra; by Guru Arjan in the
name of Dhanna Jat, where the names and occupations of some of the great
preachers are given (Guru Granth Sahib, Devanagari text, btlb, Gurudwara
Prabarldhak Committee, Amritsar, 1951, I, pp 487-488; see also ibid, I, p 109).
235 I have examined these verses in 6'Evidence for 16th Century Agrarian Condi-
tions in the GsJru Granth Sahib", IESHR, I, 1964.
236 Verses reprodtlced in MuzaSar Husain, Nama-i-Muzaffiari, Lucknow, 1917, I,
p 255.
237 Ma sasir-i Alamgiri, Calcutta, 1870-1873, pp 115-1 l 6.
238 Abul Fazl Mamuri, History of Aurangzeb 's Reign, Br Mus Or 1 61, f 1 48b.
239 Ma'asir-i Alamgirt, pp 114-115.
240 Futuhat-i Alamgiri, Br Mus Add 23, 884, f 61b.
241 Dabistan-i Mazahib, ed Nazar Ashraf, Calcutta, l 809, p 285

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Besides its undisputed peasant composition, the community admitted

men c,f the low and menial castes as well; Banda would give high
authority to "the lowliest sweeper and tanner, filthier than whom
there is no race in Hindustan".242 A later writer speaks of many of
the great Sikhchiefs being "of low birth such as carpenters, shoe-
makers and Jats".243 As among the Satnamis, we see here a percep-
tible urge on the part of the lower classes to achieve social elevation
through a casteless alternative to 'Sanskritisation'.
This is an lmportant social achievement; but while it lifted
sections of the community from a lowly status it did not yet change
the major elements of the social order. E^ren in Guru Gobind Singh's
longPerseian poem composed in criticism of Aurangzeb, there is no
reference to the oppression of the peasants.244 There was little in
the agrarian structure of the Sikh regimes of the 18th and
l9th centuries to distinguish them from their predecessors.245
The Mughal Empire owed its collapse very largely to the
agrarian crisis which engulfed it, and of which the uprisings with
their varied record of failure and success were the consequence.
Peasants, as we have seen, were deeply involved n these uprisings. Yet
the gouls of the uprising in each case were not those of the peasants;
and for them tlle fundamental conditions remained unaltered.
That peasant revolts before modern times have not generally
succeeded is a matter that hardly needs to be debated. The specific
features of Indian peasant uprisings hower deserve careful considera-
tion. The basic one, it seems to me, is their comparatively backward
level of class-conscoousness. In China peasant revolts with specific
demands for tax-reductions have caused dynastic changes. Tn the
English rising of 1381 and the Peasant Wars in Germany in the 16th
century, the peasants came forward with the objective of securing
specific changes in their legal and economic status. In other words,
the peasantry, in its own consciousness, stood forth as a class. lt is
here pre-eminently that the Indian peasant revolts exhibit a remar-
kable deficiency. The peasants might fuel a zamindar's revolt (Marathas);
they might rise in a locality (the Doab), or as a caste (Jats), or as a
sect (Satnamis, Sikhs), but they fail to attain a recognition of any
common objectives that transcended parochial l«mits.
Much of what I have said aims at attempting at least a
provisional tand partial) explanation of this historical failure. The
caste divisions in our society, the immense gulf between the peasantry
and the 'menial' proletariat, and the deeply rooted authority of the
242 Muhammad Shafi Warid, Miratu-I Waridat, Br Mus Add 6579, f 1 17b.
243 'Imadus Satadat, op cit, p 71.
244 Zafarnama, composed AD 1706 (?), Nanak Chand Naz, Jalandhar, 1959.
245 One can see this even in *}ndu Bangss otherwise sympathetic description,
Agrarian System of the Sikhs, New Delhi, 1978.

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64 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
zamindars all probably have had a part in determining this resutt.

Still, it has to be adlmitted that no last word can be said on so
complex a matter as tlle role of the peasants in a civilisation.
The history of the Indian peasantry did not end with the 17th
or 18th century with wh.;ch I have closed. T{le peasantry's first steps
towards the attainment of its self-awareness is an achievement of the
National Movement, for whose success tlle peasants were so largely
responsible. It is apparent, however, that many of the burdensotne
vestiges of thepast, the divisions and superstitions, still hinder the
cementing of those bonds among the peasants and the rural poor
which are so essential for the advance towards a just society in India.

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The Peasant in Indian History

Author(s): Irfan Habib

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3516915

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The Peasant in Indian History

THE MOMENTOUS events of this century have led to a world-wide

vProfessor of History, Aligarll Muslim University, and President of the Indian

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The Origins: The Indus Basin

1 For the information used in this paragraph, I have relied on my colleague

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The domestication of plants and, possibly later, that of cattle,

2 V Gordon Childe, Mast AIakes Himself, London, 1948, p 123.

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geographical terms as well as over time.l2

16 Cf Leonard Wooli ey, TXte BegiBlz7ielo of Civili7cltion (USESCO History of Man-

18 B S Ei 1)as, Ec0/1o)7zic Hi.StorA of Anciellt India, Calcutta, 1937, ptl 28-29.

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The Long Transltion: The Gangetic Basin

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31 For the references to iron in the Atharva-veda see Bandyopadhyaya, Economic

Economic History..., pp 90-91

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by the testimony of the Jatakas, where we frequently meet "big

The Gangetic forests also brought in a new element of popu-

"From Tribe to Untouchable; the case of Nisadas," Indian Sociery. Historical

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agricultural penetration eastward had created a complex social

Formation of the Caste Peasantry

47 TheLawsof AIanu, tr. G Buhler,Oxford, 1886, pp 420-421.

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to break stony ground".49

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to exploitation.55 The large land-holders with their own cattle and

55 RSSharma, Sudrasin Ancient India, Delini, l9S8, pp 146-149. CfKosambi,

58 Cf Narendra Wagle, Societyof the Time of theBuddha, Bombay, 1966, pp 122-123.

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segments, within a larger social system.62 Such separation of the

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34 There was, finally, the subjugation of the food-gathering

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Kosambi saw in its attack on Brahmanical animal sacrifices, the

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79 Manu, X, 84 (tr Buhler), pp 420-421

83 lbid, pp 151-152. There is support for this in iconography as well. Sankarsana,

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remains of enormous cattle-pens.85 Almost all pre-Mauryan sites are

First Millennium: Village Coxnmunity and "Feudalism"

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cultural performance of this entire period axld ascribed it to a

96 Kosambi, Introdueriosl ..., pp 255-256.

98 Bur to n S te i n, Peasant State and Society . . ., p p 24-25 .

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The use of cattle-power for continuous rotarymotion too would

100 See Spate's (lescription of the Madtlrai-Ramanathapuram Tank Country in

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One would have expected that once these depressed jatis

c 300-1200, Calcutta, 1965, p 47.