The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c15.s1.9

c15.s1.9

That there was indeed an impressive bureaucracy which administered the complicated regulation system is, as already mentioned, amply attested. However, even the best of military and administrative systems cannot by themselves produce the agrarian surplus that they need for their own maintenance. This meant that the imperial undertaking—apart from its being a “gamble on the monsoon”—essentially depended on the degree of cooperation that could be obtained from the local producers or, rather, from their leaders, the local men of substance. Over the centuries, a considerable store of mutual accommodation as well as of technical experience with assessment had been built up, but the yearly realization of the agrarian revenue always remained a precarious matter of what in each case the trade could bear.