[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Indian literature](https://indike.org/pramana/in) › [Dark Ages](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages) › [Travellers (1500–1858)](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.travel) › [Storia do Mogor](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.travel.manucci) › [Storia do Mogor (Irvine)](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.travel.manucci~en-irvine) › 255.1 # Storia do Mogor 255.1 Storia do Mogor (Irvine) 255.1 - **Language:** English ### [255.1.1](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.travel.manucci~en-irvine.255.1.1) The Hindu government is the most tyrannic and barbarous imaginable, because, all the rajahs or kings being foreigners, they treat their subjects worse than if they were slaves. All land belongs to the crown; no individual has as his own a field, or estate, or any property whatever, that he can bequeath to his children. The method in which the rajahs let out their lands is as follows: At the beginning of their year, which is in June, the officials come from the court to the villages and compel the peasants to take up the land at a certain rate. This bargain made, they must give notice at harvest-time to the king's officers, for without their permission the peasants may not harvest the grain. As soon as notice is received the officials proceed to the spot, and before allowing the crop to be cut, they ask the cultivators whether they are willing to give a half or a third more than they have contracted for at the beginning of the year. Should the cultivators agree to this, writings are drawn up and security taken; but after having made the bargain, they usually find that what they gather in does not suffice to meet the king's rent. It thus happens, more often than not, that they find themselves ruined by this revenue payment. ### [255.1.2](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.travel.manucci~en-irvine.255.1.2) It is for this reason that many of them, when the royal officials try to increase the demand, reply that they can pay no more than they agreed to before signing the papers. But this way, too, they find themselves equally ruined, for the officials then remain present during the harvest, and inspect the cutting of all the crops, the cultivator also being present. When all is ready, they first place on one side the cultivator's share ; next they compel him, then and there, to buy the king's share. When in the country-side one measure is selling for six sols, they force the peasants to give them nine. In this way, whatever be the method employed, the poor cultivator finds himself ruined. Nothing is left to him to maintain his family, seeing that they are obliged to enter every year into new engagements in order to get a subsistence for their family and obtain fresh supplies. Nor is it particularly easy to take to flight, for wherever they go they find the same tyrannies. It may be said of them what Martial sang of Phauno : ' Et mortem fugeret se Phaunius ipse peremit. Die mihi non furor este ne memoriam mori.' ### [255.1.3](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.travel.manucci~en-irvine.255.1.3) Besides, all the cultivators give sureties to the king. These sureties are usually given by one village for another. Thus the poor cultivators live on in hope. For, ordinarily, the rajahs or kings appoint fresh officials every year to lease out the village lands. These men, in order to get them taken again by the cultivators, make fresh promises, including that of governing justly and rationally. Then they advance the cultivators something to induce them to cultivate the land carefully. After the man has ploughed and sown, and is engaged in working the land, he is no longer free to remove elsewhere \[118\]. In this way they recover from the peasantry by consent or by force whatever they have lent them. This is the tyrannical system with which the rajahs or kings of these countries rule over the country people. These well deserve such treatment from their pride and their contrariness, for, if they were treated otherwise, it would be their entire ruin ; they would all kill each other, as is demonstrated by experience among those of them who have anything to lose. ### [255.1.4](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.travel.manucci~en-irvine.255.1.4) The rajahs deal thus tyrannically with the agricultural population, that being the occupation of the greater number of the inhabitants of the country, without distinction of descent or caste, for everyone may follow it. At the same time, they behave no less cruelly to their creatures and officials. For, having sent them into the provinces to collect the rents, the only business confided to them, and having allowed them to pass several years in that employment, the rajah, on the simple supposition that they must have embezzled (as to which there need be no doubt), causes them to be seized, has them whipped and exposed to other cruel tortures. All that the officials have is taken from them, and he who yesterday was a great lord is to-day the most abject of mendicants; he who yesterday was rolling in wealth wanders to-day from house to house and door to door begging an alms. ### [255.1.5](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.travel.manucci~en-irvine.255.1.5) All the collectors of the crown rents are, during the time they are in office, absolute masters of the province made over to them, and can take cognizance of all disputes, whether regarding civil or criminal questions, even matters relating to religion. In everything they can pass final sentence without appeal, even when the death penalty is involved. Since there is not throughout this empire any written law or ordinance, each one acts as it best pleases him, and puts to death anyone as he thinks fit. He can do this, since there is no one to demand an account of his acts, above all when he is a receiver of the crown rents. When any hungry wretch takes it into his head to ruin the kingdom, he goes to the king and says to him : ' Sire ! If your Majesty will give me the permission to raise money and a certain number of armed men, I will pay so many millions.' The king then asks how it is intended to raise the money. It is by nothing else than the seizure of everybody in the kingdom, men and women, and by dint of torture compelling them to pay what is demanded. Such financiers are hateful and avaricious men. The king generally consents to their unjust proposals, as he thereby satisfies his own greed; he accords the asked-for permission, and demands security bonds. ### [255.1.6](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.travel.manucci~en-irvine.255.1.6) The men, armed with the order, and impelled by their desire to gain an overplus on the sum contracted for, go about seizing everybody and putting them to torture. For, without such pressure, no one would pay anything, experience in time past having proved to the subjects that, should any of them, through fear of punishment, make no difficulties about paying what is demanded, he does not thereby evade torture. For the financier and his agents always accept on account what the poor fellow has offered; but they infer that he who pays so readily, thinking more of torture than of his money, must have a deal more that he can give. This is why they demand from such a man as much again; and, if he refuses, he is subjected to torture to enforce payment. He is not released till he has paid all that has been demanded the second time. The tortures to which they subject these men are very severe. The first is made by water, and is very cruel. They place two pieces of wood at the bottom of a pond or a river bound to four posts driven into the ground. They lay the poor sufferer on the two pieces of wood with his arms bound, either behind, at his side, or in front. Then two or three men are seated upon him, and after leaving him like that for a time, he is extricated. They then ask him to agree to what they want. If he refuses, they resume the above treatment until he makes the required promise. ### [255.1.7](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.travel.manucci~en-irvine.255.1.7) If they do not succeed in this way, they expose him to fire by making him tread on red-hot iron bars, and brand him on the ribs with iron axes heated in a fire. Others are drawn with red-hot pincers, others are tortured with cold pincers, which hurt even more. Some have their arms tied with ropes up to such a point and so tightly that the blood comes in drops from their finger-ends; and thus tightly bound they are suspended from two iron rings placed abreast and flogged with all imaginable cruelty with the whips that are used to horses. Others are stretched on the ground tied to four posts, and there they rub the man's face with criques (bricks) so violently and forcibly that it is made as flat as a board. Others are thrown naked upon sharp thorns, and on the top of the man is placed a board, on which three or four men walk up and down. In other cases they tie thick cords steeped in oil to all the fingers of the hands and throw the cords over a beam, suspending the fingers in the air, without any power of movement. They then set light to the ends of the cords and let them burn to the last, unless the sufferer before that time promises what is asked. If he makes a promise it is reduced to writing, and the poor wretch has to procure a surety. --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.travel.manucci~en-irvine.255.1](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darkages.travel.manucci~en-irvine.255.1) · Pramāṇa