DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

354 CONTRAST WITH EUROPEAN FEUDALISM [ 10.1
household or a village-community, and not for a wider market.” In a
broad sense, this is also true here, though increasing commodity production
in metals, salt, coconuts, cotton, tambula (pan, Piper betle), areca
nuts, and the like has to be noted. 3) “Demesne-farming ; on the lord’s
estate, often on a considerable scale, by compulsory labour service.” This
is decidedly not true of India. The manorial system had begun to come into
existence only towards the end of the feudal period, in India. The reason
was that the Mauryan empire had nothing to correspond to the villas and
slave economy of classical Rome. The unit of settlement was the village.
It has been shown that its expansion into tribal areas took place in
general by far more peaceful methods than under Rome, or Charlemagne,
or feudal barons. Nevertheless, the later Indian feudal lords tried
always to cultivate some lands directly so as to be independent of the
villagers, whose united resistance or failure to produce a crop in bad years
might bring disaster to the lord. The armed retainers of the baron had to be
assured an independent food supply for emergencies. These seig-neurial
lands were often cultivated by slaves. Slavery now took on a new
importance, though still not indispensable to the means of production.
4) “ Political decentralization “ is common to both India and Europe,
beginning in the period of feudalism from above. The Mauryan theory
that all land belongs to the king was reinforced by the tribal concept of land
as territory (not property) held in common by the tribe, whose symbol and
expression was the chief; this chief would be replaced by the king (Arth.
11.1), or turn into a king, or be converted into a feudal tributary by a
conqueror who might at need support the chieftain against his former
tribesmen. In time, the functions of the village councils were more and
more usurped by the nearest feudal lord. The exception was of villages
paying taxes directly to the king. For them, and for their individual
land-owners, some separate form of ownership or tenure-rights were
recognized. 5) “Conditional holding of land by lords on some kind of
service-tenure.” This is particularly noticeable among Rajputs, whose chief
profession was of arms and among the earlier Muslims, whose chiefs
were invaders and who used the common religion to keep themselves,