The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c22.60

v4.c22.60

In the authorities relating to northern India, the practice of assessing villages as units first becomes prominent in the reign of Aurangzīb, but it would be a mistake to regard it as an innovation. The most probable view, based on stray hints and casual expressions in a literature which is far from complete, is that village assessment was already practised before the Muslim conquest, and that it never entirely disappeared. In the fourteenth century, and again in the sixteenth, the state for a time entered into direct relations with individual peasants, but probably village assessments were the rule in the thirteenth and fifteenth, as they certainly were in the seventeenth and eighteenth. In an extensive kingdom assessment on individuals could be carried out effectively only by a strong, wise, and vigorous administration: in times when these qualities were not available, the line of least resistance was to deal with villages as units.