The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c15.s1.13

c15.s1.13

While there is no doubt that the main prop of the Mughal Empire was agriculture, it would seem that trade and finance as important, even pivotal, factors are left somewhat in the dark. The language of the official documents and the chronicles puts almost exclusive stress on the warrior-administrator with his troopers and clerks on the one hand and the peasant or ryot (*ra'īyat*) on the other, and nothing in between. The situation looks as if the administration was in direct contact with the peasant-producers who provided the sinews of war as well as of peace. Such a situation, where all manner of intermediaries are excluded and dealings are directly with each peasant separately seems indeed to have been the ideal, as it also was of the British administration.¹⁹ And it stands to reason that the bureaucratic idiom was geared to this ideal. However, the various ways in which the sources insist on direct relations with the peasant—to the point of encouraging him to pay his revenue directly into the treasury, bypassing the revenue collectors²⁰—suggest that actual practice will have been rather different. In fact, it could hardly have been otherwise.