History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c85.s5.1

v5.c85.s5.1

In Southern India, with many parts of it harried by more than a century of warfare, the peasantry had many enemies to dread besides the regular fighters on both sides. The Mughal soldiers on their march often trod down the crops, and though the Emperor had a special body of officers for compensating the peasants for this loss (paimali-i-zarait), his financial difficulties led to the neglect of this humane rule. The worst oppressors of the peasants, however, were the tail of the army—the vast nondescript horde of servants, day labourers, darvishes and other vagrants who followed Aurangzib's "moving city of tents" in the hope of picking up crumbs where such a crowd had gathered. Particularly the Beluchi camel-owners who hired out their animals to the army, and unattached Afghans searching for employment, plundered and beat the country people most mercilessly. The banjaras or wandering grain dealer tribe, who moved in bodies, sometimes of 5000 men, each with his couple of bullocks loaded with grain, were so strong in their strength of numbers and contempt for the petty officers of Government, that they sometimes looted the people on the wayside and fed their cattle on the crops in the fields, with impunity. Even the royal messengers (called mewrahs in Gujrat) who carried Government letters, reports of spies, and baskets of fruits for presentation to the Emperor, used to rob the people of the villages they passed by, sometimes under the pretext of making good the losses in the fruits they carried. [Mughal Adm. Ch. 5.] The Emperor's repeated orders against this kind of iniquity were of no avail. [Mirat 304.]