The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c22.14

v4.c22.14

As regards the members of the brotherhood, there is no doubt that, subject to due payment of the revenue, their connection with the village was regarded as a settled fact; and if a village was deserted owing to economic or administrative pressure, there was a general understanding that the brotherhood could return and occupy it if they chose to do so. Individual members of the brotherhood could transmit their land to their heirs, and could transfer it by sale or mortgage, but always subject to the fundamental condition that the revenue due was paid. Under Hindu law a peasant could be ejected for inefficiency, and possibly for other reasons also; no similar provision has been traced in the extant official documents of the Muslim period, but these establish the fact that peasants could be flogged for failure to produce adequate crops, while sale of a peasant's wife and children, although not of the peasant himself, was a recognised process for the recovery of arrears.