[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [General history and culture](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general) › [Shivaji and His Times](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.sarkar-1919) › c19.s2.15 # Shivaji and His Times c19.s2.15 Shivaji and His Times c19.s2.15 - **Language:** English ### [c19.s2.15](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.sarkar-1919.c19.s2.15) Land was the only stable thing in an ever-changing world, subject to the appalling outbursts of Nature's forces, which swept away man and his handiwork, and the even more violent transformations of political revolution. But the new conquerors always left the land to the old peasant because he alone could till it in that age of sparse population, and the revenue collection to the old hereditary middlemen, because they alone knew the details of the locality and could ensure some payment from the land to a distant sovereign who would have found it impossible to collect his dues from each petty tiller of the soil directly. The offices in connection with land, therefore, tended to become hereditary and the contractor of revenue blossomed in time into a landowner with a permanent family claim to a portion of the yield of his village or district. Attachment to one's ancestral land was the strongest passion in that age of little trade and no large-scale industry. I know of a Brahman family which migrated from the Ratnagiri district to Ahmadabad six generations ago, and no longer own an inch of land of their own in their ancient home nor keep any business connection with it, and yet they have carefully preserved for two centuries the old title-deeds of their long-abandoned lands. - [Previous: c19.s2.14](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.sarkar-1919.c19.s2.14) - [Next: c19.s2.16](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.sarkar-1919.c19.s2.16) - [Up: c19.s2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.sarkar-1919.c19.s2) --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.sarkar-1919.c19.s2.15](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.sarkar-1919.c19.s2.15) · Pramāṇa