Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c12.25

c12.25

It is not possible to estimate precisely the degree to which these calamities affected the population of India. However, it would be fair to assume that the loss caused by the great plague and the great famine in the early part of the seventeenth centuries was gradually made up. According to David Hume, societies invariably recover from the ravages of even the severest epidemics within a generation or two; and this optimistic notion has been accepted as true by many later writers on population.¹⁸ Medieval Indian famines were frightful and of common occurrence, prompting Davis to declare that "irregularity of monsoon...has made India a land of famine".¹⁹ But about them there were two redeeming features. They occurred only occasionally and were confined to certain specific regions. As Moreland has pointed out, "famine itself was an exceptional rather than a normal characteristic of the country and the period."²⁰ Contradictory statements as they may appear, from the point of view of population structure, the statements of Davis and Moreland are not irreconcielalble. Deaths there were in large numbers no doubt, but migrations to neighbouring provinces or enslavement of men, women and childern in periods of scarcity and drought did not always cause any major demographic setback.²¹ Famines were common, but population losses caused by them were made up late or soon.