Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c11.164

c11.164

This conclusion is also indirectly supported by Kingsley Davis and Colin Clark. Davis says : “Prior to the censuses people guessed the population of India to be much less than it really was...As time went by and the Europeans became better acquainted with the territory they were administering, the estimates imporoved...Yet despite the steady improvement, we find that even as late as 1867... the all-India estimate was apparently far too low...The best policy seems to be to revise Moreland’s figure for 1600 upward to 125 million..."¹¹⁵ Colin Clark accepts the figure of 100 million for 1600 but for 1650 he estimates the population of India at 150 million.¹¹⁶ He has no explanation to offer for the rise in numbers by fifty per cent in half a century during which there was a visitation of a catastrophic plague in northern India followed by an equally devastating famine in southern. Surely if we accept his figure of 150 million for 1650 (after the great plague of 1616-24 and the great famine of 1630-33), the same numbers, or if not the same a little less, i. e. 140 million, should be a correct estimate for A.D. 1600.