Agrarian Society Mughal rule did not replace the agrarian society of Mithila, Vajji and Anga with a single uniform land system. It superimposed imperial fiscal claims, assignments and administrative categories upon village production, regional chieftaincies, hereditary local offices and ecologies shaped by the Ganga, Gandak, Kosi and their tributaries. The most useful contemporary source, Abu’l-Fazl’s A’in-i Akbari, gives unusually detailed fiscal statistics for the Bihar subah, including the sarkars of Tirhut, Hajipur and Munger. Yet those figures record assessed revenue and administrative knowledge; they do not by themselves tell us what every cultivator paid, what every zamindar retained, or how much was actually collected in a flood-prone year. This chapter therefore reconstructs Mughal agrarian society through a layered method: official statistics, regional revenue documents, the history of Bihar’s zamindars and chieftains, agrarian ecology, and later gazetteer summaries are used together but never treated as interchangeable archives. 52.1 Land revenue is a social relation before it is a statistic The Mughal state’s agrarian income depended on the crop produced by cultivators, but the path from field to treasury passed through multiple claims. Irfan Habib’s central warning remains essential: the Mughal land revenue was neither a modern property tax nor simply a landlord’s rent. It was a state claim upon agricultural produce, expressed through assessment, rates, measurement, crop estimates and cash equivalents. In regional society this claim interacted with the rights of zamindars, village headmen, hereditary record- keepers and cultivators. To study revenue is therefore to study power, labour and negotiation: who could demand, who could record, who could resist, who advanced cash, and who bore the risk when crops failed. 52.2 The subah–sarkar framework made the region fiscally legible Under Akbar, Bihar was represented as a subah divided into sarkars, and the connected historical region of this volume cut across several of them. Tirhut organized much of north Bihar; Hajipur controlled a strategically important Ganga–Gandak zone; and Munger incorporated much of the eastern country connected with Anga, including Bhagalpur in the A’in’s mahal list. These were imperial administrative frames, not timeless cultural borders. Mithila did not cease to exist because Tirhut appeared in Mughal accounts, and Anga’s older cultural geography was not identical with Sarkar Munger. The fiscal map must therefore be read as one historical layer among several. 52.3 The A’in-i Akbari is an administrative archive, not a census Abu’l-Fazl’s compilation is exceptionally valuable because it records measured land, mahals, assessed revenue and military obligations for many localities. It also describes Bihar’s rivers, crops and agricultural abundance. But its precision can create false confidence. A revenue figure is a fiscal claim recorded for administrative purposes; it is not an enumeration of every household, every field or every transfer of grain. Measurement coverage varied, local categories were translated into imperial formats, and the relationship between assessed revenue (jama) and realized collection (hasil) could be substantial. The A’in should be used quantitatively, but with the discipline appropriate to an official fiscal document. 543543 GAJENDRA THAKUR Figure 204 — Fiscal geography from subah to village 52.4 Tirhut appears as a large, internally differentiated fiscal unit In the A’in’s Bihar section, Sarkar Tirhut contains seventy-four mahals. It is assigned 266,464 bighas and 2 biswas of measured land and an assessed revenue of 19,179,777½ dams. The same entry records cavalry and infantry obligations, reminding us that fiscal capacity and military service belonged to the same imperial grammar. The seventy-four mahals matter more than a single total: they show that ‘Tirhut’ was not administered as one undifferentiated estate. It was a mosaic of assessment units whose local histories, cultivation intensity, waterways and intermediaries could differ sharply. 52.5 Hajipur demonstrates the fiscal importance of the river junction Sarkar Hajipur is listed with eleven mahals, 436,952 bighas and 15 biswas of measured land, and assessed revenue of 27,831,030 dams. The number is larger than Tirhut’s recorded assessment even though Tirhut contains many more mahals, a warning against using the count of administrative units as a proxy for productive capacity. Hajipur’s position near the Gandak–Ganga junction linked agrarian collection to ferries, routes and commercial movement. Revenue geography was therefore also transport geography: a highly productive riverine zone could be valuable not only because of crops but because it concentrated movement, markets and administrative access. 52.6 Munger connects Anga to a major eastern revenue-military zone The A’in lists Sarkar Munger with thirty-one mahals and assessed revenue of 109,625,981½ dams; the mahal list includes Bhagalpur and other eastern localities. Modern Munger district history preserves the same broad fiscal profile and notes the sarkar’s cavalry and infantry obligations. The scale of the recorded demand is striking, but it should not be converted directly into a measure of peasant welfare or actual annual realization. For this volume, its importance is geographical: the Mughal fiscal history of Anga cannot be reconstructed from Bhagalpur alone. It belongs to a wider Munger-centred administrative and military landscape stretching along the Ganga. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II 52.7 A 1582 Tirhut–Hajipur assessment offers a second statistical window The 1907 Darbhanga district gazetteer, drawing on earlier revenue history, states that Todar Mal’s 1582 assessment covered 817,370 acres in the sarkars of Hajipur and Tirhut and fixed revenue at Rs 11,63,020. The combined A’in figures, converted at forty dams to the rupee, yield a broadly comparable but not identical magnitude. The difference is analytically useful. Fiscal compilations produced at different dates and through different procedures should not be forced into artificial agreement. Later gazetteers can preserve earlier assessments, but they also translate them into colonial units and administrative concerns. Convergence is evidence; discrepancy is evidence too. Figure 205 — Akbar-era fiscal profiles of Tirhut, Hajipur and Munger 52.8 Measurement was a technology of rule, not a neutral act To measure land was to classify cultivation, define assessable area and make local production comparable across administrative units. Yet an alluvial region challenged any ideal of fixed cadastral space. Rivers shifted channels, chars emerged and disappeared, fields flooded, and cultivation moved between low and high ground. The bigha itself was a historical measure whose local value could vary; the A’in’s attempt to standardize measures did not erase every regional practice. Measurement should therefore be studied as a state technology applied to a moving landscape, not as a modern survey grid perfectly laid over stable plots. 52.9 Jama and hasil must never be collapsed Jama was the assessed or sanctioned revenue demand; hasil was what was actually realized. A high jama could indicate fiscal expectations, rich cultivation or administrative optimism, but without collection records it does not prove that the treasury received the full amount. Arrears, remissions, crop failure, local resistance, military disorder and the bargaining power of zamindars could all widen the distance between assessment and realization. This distinction is especially important when comparing Tirhut, Hajipur and Munger. The chapter therefore uses A’in totals as indicators of the fiscal value assigned to regions, not as audited receipts. 52.10 Mughal revenue was a claim on the crop, not modern ownership of soil European observers often described the Mughal emperor as owner of all land, but this language can obscure the layered character of agrarian rights. Habib emphasizes that the state claim functioned as a tax on agricultural produce and could coexist with cultivator possession, zamindari claims and village-level 545545 GAJENDRA THAKUR customary rights. The existence of a state demand did not erase other rights in land, nor did a zamindar’s revenue role make him equivalent to a nineteenth-century Permanent Settlement landlord. The categories of Chapter 55 must not be imported into Chapter 52. 52.11 The peasant household remained the productive centre of the system Imperial statistics begin with the state, but agricultural production began with households that supplied seed, labour, tools, draught power and everyday risk-bearing. Family labour could be supplemented by hired workers, dependants or service groups. Cultivators decided how much land could be sown, which crops to combine and how to respond to flood, drought, cattle loss or debt. A revenue schedule could influence these decisions, but it could not mechanically determine them. The productive household therefore forms the lowest indispensable scale of analysis beneath every imperial revenue total. 52.12 Village officers translated fields into fiscal records The Mughal countryside depended on local knowledge. Headmen, patwaris, qanungos, chaudhuris and other intermediaries connected cultivation to accounts, remissions, collections and the authentication of rights. Their functions varied by place and period, but the principle is clear: the imperial state could not inspect every field directly. It governed through people who knew village boundaries, crop histories, customary shares and local families. Such officers could mediate between cultivators and higher authority, but they could also use their informational advantage to consolidate influence. 52.13 Zamindars were political intermediaries, not merely rent collectors The Mughal term zamindar covered a range of local power-holders, from relatively modest revenue claimants to substantial chiefs with armed followers, forts and territorial authority. Tahir Hussain Ansari’s study of Bihar shows how Mughal consolidation depended on negotiation, confirmation and conflict with such chieftains. Their rights could include a share of agrarian surplus, policing or military responsibilities, hereditary status and local patronage. Calling all of them ‘landlords’ compresses several functions into one modern category and conceals the political character of agrarian extraction. 52.14 The Darbhanga house became one regional node within Mughal fiscal politics The history of the Darbhanga Raj belongs partly to the Mughal period but should not be read backward from its later colonial scale. Regional traditions and documents associate Mahesh Thakur and his successors with the consolidation of revenue authority in Tirhut under Mughal rule. Ansari reconstructs the house’s relationships with imperial and provincial officials, including the role of Gopal Thakur during the Akbar- period survey and settlement. The significant historical point is not that a later great estate already existed in finished form, but that a lineage of learned and revenue intermediaries accumulated recognized fiscal functions over time. 52.15 Qabuliyat, arrears and share transfers reveal the contractual side of revenue A seventeenth-century dispute discussed by Ansari records a qabuliyat for Tirhut and arrears apportioned among share-holders. When some holders could not meet their portion of the government demand, shares in chaudhuri and qanungo rights were transferred in connection with payment of the outstanding sum. This kind of evidence opens a different window from the A’in. Instead of a top-down total, we see obligation HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II divided among named holders, arrears producing pressure, and fiscal rights becoming transferable assets. Mughal agrarian society was therefore also a world of contracts, guarantees, debt and negotiated shares. Figure 206 — Overlapping claims on agrarian surplus 52.16 Khalisa and jagir changed the destination of revenue claims A large part of the Mughal revenue base was assigned in jagir to mansabdars, while khalisa lands supplied the imperial treasury more directly. This distinction affected who collected or benefited from assessed revenue, but it did not transform the underlying crop into the assignee’s private freehold. Jagirdars held assignments whose location could change; they had incentives to secure collection within the terms of office. The political economy of assignment could therefore shape local pressure even when village cultivation continued under older routines. 52.17 Bihar’s rice economy was recognized in the Mughal description itself Abu’l-Fazl’s description of the Bihar subah states that agriculture flourished to a high degree and singles out rice for both quality and quantity. This is particularly important for Mithila and the low-lying Gangetic plains, where water abundance could sustain intensive paddy cultivation but also expose crops to flood and channel change. Rice should not be treated as the only crop, yet it anchors the relationship between ecology and revenue: a state seeking agrarian surplus had to adapt its demand to a landscape where water created both fertility and risk. 52.18 Pulses, sugarcane and betel diversified the agrarian base The same Bihar description mentions khesari, abundant sugarcane and high-quality Maghi betel leaf. These details prevent a monocrop picture of the province. Pulses mattered to subsistence and soil-use cycles; sugarcane was a high-value crop requiring labour and processing; betel linked specialized cultivation to market demand. General Mughal sources also show oilseeds and other commercial crops across north India. The agrarian economy of the connected region therefore combined staple production with crops that moved through wider markets and could attract stronger fiscal interest. 547547 GAJENDRA THAKUR 52.19 Commercialization did not begin with colonial indigo Later chapters will examine indigo, opium and colonial commodity regimes, but it would be equally misleading to imagine a purely subsistence Mughal countryside. The state preferred revenue-rich crops; sugarcane, oilseeds, poppy and other marketable products circulated alongside grain. Cash assessment itself increased the importance of markets because cultivators and intermediaries needed monetary resources to meet obligations denominated in money. Commercialization was therefore already present, though its institutions and coercive mechanisms differed from the nineteenth-century indigo and opium systems. 52.20 Seasonal cropping made revenue dependent on ecological timing Agriculture followed kharif and rabi cycles, and wetter tracts could sustain multiple crops where water and labour permitted. The fiscal year had to interact with harvest time. A demand poorly synchronized with production could intensify borrowing or force sale at unfavourable moments. Flood, drought and river erosion could alter the cultivable base between assessments. The history of revenue is therefore also a history of calendars: sowing, transplanting, harvesting, collection and remittance did not occur simultaneously, and the gap between them shaped rural vulnerability. 52.21 Expansion of cultivation changed the frontier between field and waste Mughal-period economic growth in Bihar included expansion of cultivation into areas previously classified as waste, scrub or forest. But ‘waste’ is an administrative category, not proof of empty land. Grazing, fishing, fuel collection, shifting cultivation and seasonal use could occupy spaces not recorded as regularly ploughed fields. Bringing new land under assessment could increase state revenue while narrowing access to common resources. Agrarian expansion therefore redistributed ecological rights as well as enlarging the measured crop area. 52.22 Labour relations extended beyond the category of cultivator Fields depended on ploughmen, cattle keepers, artisans who repaired tools, transport workers, boatmen, processors of cane and oilseeds, and service communities attached to villages and markets. Some were paid in cash, some in grain, some through customary shares or access to land. The Mughal revenue archive rarely records this labour world in proportion to its importance. A social history of agrarian revenue must therefore reconstruct the workers who made assessed production possible but appear only indirectly in fiscal documents. 52.23 Monetized obligations made credit structurally important Where revenue was expressed or collected in cash, cultivators and intermediaries needed liquidity before, during and after harvest. Advances, merchant credit, grain loans and arrears therefore belonged to the fiscal system even when surviving documents are fragmentary. The seventeenth-century Tirhut share dispute demonstrates how unpaid government dues could reorder rights among local holders. Debt was not simply a private household problem; it could become a mechanism through which fiscal authority, office and property-like claims were redistributed. 52.24 Revenue pressure and agrarian prosperity could coexist High fiscal value does not automatically mean misery, and abundant agriculture does not mean light taxation. Mughal agrarian regions could display both substantial production and strong extraction. The relevant question is distribution: how much surplus remained with cultivators after seed, subsistence, local HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II claims and state revenue; how collection varied by season; and what bargaining resources different groups possessed. This is why aggregate revenue statistics cannot substitute for social history. Prosperity at the level of a sarkar and insecurity at the level of a household are not mutually exclusive. 52.25 Coercion and negotiation were both built into collection Revenue collection had coercive backing, but the state also depended on cooperation. Zamindars could resist; cultivators could flee or reduce cultivation; local officers could delay, conceal or renegotiate assessments; imperial authorities could remit or reschedule demands. The relationship was therefore neither a free contract nor unmediated force. It was a field of unequal negotiation in which the capacity to mobilize armed followers, local knowledge, credit or imperial patronage could materially alter outcomes. 52.26 Munger’s fiscal weight was tied to its strategic geography Munger was not simply an agricultural hinterland. Its fort, Ganga position and role in eastern military movement linked revenue to strategic control. The A’in’s very large assessed revenue and troop obligations should be read together. Bhagalpur and other Anga localities within Sarkar Munger contributed to a fiscal- military corridor connecting Bihar with Bengal. In this setting, agrarian surplus supported more than a treasury: it sustained garrisons, officials, transport and the circulation of armed power along the river. 52.27 Tirhut and Anga faced different ecological combinations inside one imperial province The connected region should not be flattened into a single ‘Bihar agriculture’. North Bihar’s floodplains, Gandak and Kosi systems, and dense wet-rice ecologies differed from the Ganga-edge and upland combinations visible farther east around Munger and Bhagalpur. These differences affected crop mix, transport, settlement stability and the cost of measurement. Mughal categories standardized administration across space, but ecological diversity limited how uniform agrarian practice could become. 52.28 The Nepal Tarai was connected to the agrarian zone without being Mughal fiscal territory The northern cultural and economic world of Mithila crossed the political frontier toward the Tarai/Madhesh, but Mughal Bihar’s revenue statistics cannot simply be extended into territories under Nepalese polities. People, cattle, grain, forest products and religious networks crossed boundaries more easily than fiscal sovereignty did. This distinction matters for the India–Nepal scope of the volume: interaction zones can be continuous while political economies remain different. Chapter 65 returns to the borderland economy with the appropriate Nepal-side evidence. 52.29 Method: keep imperial statistics, regional documents and colonial reconstructions in separate columns A sound reconstruction uses the A’in for late-sixteenth-century fiscal geography; qabuliyat, farmans and regional histories for negotiated rights and obligations; general Mughal agrarian scholarship for analytical categories; and colonial gazetteers only as later summaries that sometimes preserve earlier figures. No source is allowed to silently borrow the authority of another. The famous 1582 Tirhut–Hajipur assessment, for example, is valuable precisely because its later gazetteer transmission can be compared with the A’in rather than substituted for it. 549549 GAJENDRA THAKUR Figure 207 — Evidence firewall for Mughal agrarian reconstruction 52.30 Conclusion: Mughal agrarian society was a layered fiscal ecology Across Tirhut, Hajipur and Munger, the Mughal state made countryside legible through sarkars, mahals, measurement, assessed revenue and recorded obligations. Beneath that grid remained cultivator households, seasonal crops, flood risk, village officers, zamindars, credit relations, local rights and ecological differences. The resulting order was neither a timeless village system nor a preview of the Permanent Settlement. It was a specifically early modern configuration in which imperial extraction depended on local intermediaries and productive landscapes that could never be reduced entirely to the numbers written in a revenue table. Table 52.1 — Evidence domains for reconstructing Mughal land, revenue and agrarian society Evidence domain What it can establish Principal limit A’in-i Akbari sarkars, mahals, measured land, assessed jama is not identical with actual revenue, crops, administrative geography collection; measurement coverage varies Qabuliyat, farman, named obligations, shares, arrears, survival is selective and often revenue disputes confirmation of offices and rights centred on elites Regional political brokerage, hereditary claims, later lineage histories can project zamindar/chief histories conflict and imperial negotiation continuity backward Agrarian ecology crop possibilities, flood risk, transport, environment alone cannot establish seasonal constraints fiscal institutions Colonial gazetteers later summaries of earlier assessments translate the past into colonial units and local administrative memory and categories Modern economic jama/hasil, zamindar, jagir, surplus general models require regional history distribution, quantitative comparison testing