Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India c8.s6.8

c8.s6.8

Conditions became intolerable by the time of Shahjahan as attested to by Manucci and Manrique. Peasants were compelled to sell their women and children to meet the revenue demand. Manrique writes that "the peasants were carried off... to various markets and fairs (to be sold) with their poor unhappy wives behind them, carrying their small children all crying and lamenting to meet the revenue demand". Bernier too affirms that "the unfortunate peasants who were incapable of discharging the demand of their rapacious lords, were bereft of their children who were carried away as slaves."¹⁹⁰