The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c15.s1.28

c15.s1.28

The point to be stressed is not the deficiencies of public order—the situation seems to have compared favorably with that in other areas, for instance, the Deccan sultanates—but that observers seem to have taken such disturbances as in the nature of things, as a fact of life. The basic structure, then, to which one had to adapt oneself, was the precarious balance of “regulation” tracts round the market towns and uncontrolled interstitial areas with their numerous rājās beyond the Mughal’s effective grasp. Or, in Mughal terms, revenue paying, or *ra’īyatī*, areas as against the “rebellious”