Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c5.s4.1

c5.s4.1

All these source-materials, though impressive in bulk, are deficient in actual demographic data for the period A.D. 1000 to 1800. And yet, as Kingsley Davis has pointed out, research on medieval Indian demography is not just a ‘quixotic’ effort, or ‘an exercise of the imagination.’ "It is true that Indian statistics do not cover the whole history of India......But what country exists whose history is so covered ?......Compared with the world as a whole, India's past population statistics are above the average. Certainly she has had more usable data than any country of equal backwardness, and this fact constitutes one of the strongest reasons for making a special study of her population."¹