KONGRE BİLDİRİLERİ
Urban records were the responsibility of the Kotwal, an official who had originally been
responsible for the defence of a fort31. In due course, as and when the defence of walled cities in the
heartland was no longer necessary the official came to perform the task of municipal administrator or
chief of police. It is in this capacity that the Ain [p. 577] expected him to compile registers of occupied
houses and properties, make wards within the city and assign an official to each ward or Muhalla
whose task was to prepare a day book to record comings and goings within a ward. A similar daybook
was maintained for each category of occupation which helped in reducing the level of unemployment.
The rural tax collectors were assigned the task of measuring all cultivated land and classify its
sections in accordance with productivity; local elite involved in the task of revenue collection were
to be given a potion of the revenue. Patwaris and Muqaddams were required to maintain their own
registers of land and revenue assessment and a copy of these was to be kept in the revenue collector’s
office, these records were to be reviewed and reported to the central government every week. The
records of the patwari were to be verified/countersigned by prominent people of the mauza/village
and maintained both at the local and central levels [581 ff]. The office of Tabkchi was linked to that of
the Qanungo; he was required to delimit the land of each village, classify barren and cultivated land,
note the details of agreement reached with each cultivator and draw up a ten year chart of the assets
of a mauza. The name of the farmer and the village headman was noted along with the net product of
each village according to date of seed sowing, kind of crop and the shortfall or increase in production
compared to the previous record [587 f]. Twelve categories of land were identified for assessment
under four heads, each having three sub-categories of good, medium and poor [608 ff].
The typical self-sufficient South Asian village generally had one family of cultivators with
a caste title of Chaudhry; if others owned land they were lower in status but equal in rights and
obligations toward their dependents. As the closed village was essentially a non-monetized economy,
its community was mutually dependent in terms of services. The producer of grain acquired the
dominant position as the provider of food to the entire populace, which consequently, was classified
as his dependents. A local share was fixed for each category of service provider in a village; people
of each occupation provided, in exchange for grain, their service to village people in general and the
landowner in particular, so that communal security of essential goods and services was secure under a
convention of rights and duties.
The apportionment of grain for the dependent occupations, probably regulated on the &6