DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

9.6] POLITICAL HISTORY ; NEW CASH CROPS 333
brahmins or other castes, had no armed force whatever at their
command. Even the few serious crimes were punished only by exile
or by the king. Because of successive conquests, each of which
exacted something more than.the previous tribute, the land had to pay
gradually increasing amounts of taxes. These were mostly in kind till the
1880’s until which time they were farmed out by auction for conversion
into the cash which the government needed. The Muslims first raided the
land of the communes about 1310 under Malik Kafur, had a transient
occupation headed by Hassan Gangu Bahamani which seems to have
alternated with Vijayanagar control. Somewhere about this period,
garrisons appeared and had to be paid for, whether effective in defence
or not. The real Muslim conquest (consolidating the raid of Mahmud
Gawan in 1470) was by Yusuf Adil Shah in 1482. The Muslims
immediately made some of the landholders into feudal military
governors over the villages, with title of Desal which has now
become a surname. These chosen few had the right and the duty of
maintaining, for the first time, armed retainers who would serve the
higher feudal lord at need, but whose main purpose was tax collection.
Their common brahminism did not prevent immediate oppression by
the new Desais of their own fellow-land-holders. Tradition reports that
some would humble a neighbour by forcing him to do menial service
or tying him up in the stables. The communes began even to encroach
upon each other’s territory, and the only known internecine armed
conflict between them belongs to these forty years.
In 1510, the Portuguese occupied the island of Tisuary, for it
could be held (like Macao, Bombay, Diu) by a naval power that had
good ships and gunpowder but not too many men for a permanent
garrison. Alfonso d’Albuquerque was aided by the local population
against the Muslims, who were driven out in 1511 ; in reward, the ancient
rights were restored and guaranteed to the communes, on condition of
paying all taxes that had been imposed, even by the Muslims. - To
this circumstance is due the survival, at least in form, on the Goan village
commune. The Jesuits introduced several new plants from South America.
Of these, the cashew is the most valuable as a money crop (the nut),