The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c22.54

v4.c22.54

The only definite change in practice recorded in this reign was the introduction of the *āltamghā* grant, a form of tenure which was already known in Central Asia but had not previously existed in India. A deserving officer could hope to receive a grant under this tenure of the village or *pargana* in which he was born, with the promise that the grant, once made, should not be altered or resumed. During the seventeenth century such grants appear to have been made very rarely, but the institution is of historical interest for two reasons. In the first place, it is the nearest approach to landownership which has been traced during the Mughul period; ordinary grants were, as has been said above, liable to resumption or variation at any time in the ordinary course of administration, but an *āltamghā* could be annulled only by the final authority of the emperor, or, as modern jurists might say, by an Act of State. In the second place, during the eighteenth century the original limitations on the tenure came to be ignored, and the *āltamghā* grants which were then made profusely were subsequently recognised by the British government as conferring a perpetual and transferable right to hold the land free of revenue, the most complete form of landownership now existing in the country.