c h a p t e r t w o Saranjam System of th« Marathas 9 O CH\t-TER TWO Saranjaw Sy«t«n of th« Marathaa Tha word aaranjam waa used by the Marathsis to mean provisions or assignment o f land to a persc») for m ilitary servicesi it is in the latter sense that the term is used here* Vasudeo Shastri Khare^ has traced the origin of the saranjaai system to qharpaqa and the financial difficulties of the Pesh%«, without referreing to the practice of land- assi(?nment for military services that existed in the pre- u Maratha period* The Marathas, however# knew the saranjam system of the Mughals from within^; son« Marathas'liad served as mansabdars under the Mughals* The Marathas adopted the system in the eighteenth century and made, without much thought and foresight, chancres in it. It would be necessary to understand the saranjam system of the Sultans of Delhi and the Mughals, so as to understand t^e changes brought therein by the Marathas* It would be however useful to note the system of land grants in ancient India to find out whether the practice of assigning land for military services exifted in ancient India* Land-grants in Ancient India The grants of land in ancioit India, could be made only 26 by th m king and not by a diatrlct officerLand was glv«n In grant for religious and educational purposes to the Brahndns*^ rhough there are a few cases In ancient tines of land given In grant restxned by later klngs^# the general tendency was that such resumptions %fcre reqarded as sinful by the Bratunlns*^ And, therefore* while giving grants the kings excepted the grants already made to the Brahmins and temples*^ There was, however, a thought that land should not be granted to the government officials and If granted there should be scste restrictions* The gift of land, according to Kautllya/ may be made to higher o fficers but they could not sell or O mortgage It. The Shukranltlsar Is more emphatic* P.V* Kane sayst **The ^ukranltlsar emphasizes that salaries should be In panas, that a king should not make a gift even of a flnger- br«tadth of land as emolument to any servant, but that If does give land. It should be held only for the llfe-tln« of the m9 officer* There are some scholars who Indicate the practice of grants of land to the Brahmins from the first century onwards and Indicate that after lOOO A*D*, the kings grsmted lands to their vassals and officials*There seems, however, little evidence of the existence of the grant of land for military service In the ancient times, though land was granted for administrative purposes* Xt Is, however, statc^fl that "the secular vassals helped their lords by governing their fiefs and 27 supplying troops in times of war* .11 Jagir System undT the Muhamadans The Muhammadans even before their invasion of India had developed the system of land assignments*^^ The Sultans of Delhi used it widely in bringing fresh territories under control; they distributed tracts of land amona their followers and officials* These tracts of land were called as iqta and the man entrusted with the charge of an iqta was called a m\iqta»^^ Though the system of land'assignment continued throughout the Sultanate period« the sense of attachment to the land received on the I part of the dcnee is apparent fr<»n the beginning* Sultan Balban during h is Lahore campaign came to know that '*the old Shamsi military grantees of land were unfit for service and never 14 went out.** On further inquiry he came to tanow that many of the grantees of Shamsu-d-din in the Doab had either died or become infirm and that their sons had taken possession of the grants as an inheritance from their fathers*Sultan Balban ordered to pension off the old and the unfit i^ l e the villages under persons who could perform military services were not to be taken back* The Sultan^ however* took back the or^ier on the ccmpassionate ground*^® Sultan Alau>d*>din K h ilji ordered that "w h e rw e r there was a village held by proprietary right (milk). in free gift 2B r> (in *am), or as a religious endovnnnent (wakf) it should* by one ..17 stroke of pen be brought back under the exchequer*' Alau»d»din« thus» put a check on the practice of granting these three types of land-grants# though he could not have possibly confiscated all such grants* *?he very fact that he employed a powerful intelligence*syatem to gain information X8 about the activities of the nobility and forbade unauthorised 19 meetings amcmg it s metribers , indicates that nobility and especially military nobility did continue under Alau-d»din Khilji. One of the main reas<%is for the continuation of land. assignment for military services was that the territories were only partially conquered by the Sultans and sometines the nobles conquered the territories on their own, which v m r e then 20 granted as iqtas by the Sultans. The necessity of the military nobility felt by the Sultans was perceived and, therefore, exploited by the nobility, %rtiich tried, despite strcmg Sultans, to look upon iqta as hereditary property. £ven Farid, the future Sher Shah, had to argue with the Afghan nobles that the assign^ ment from t h e Sultan, unlike family property, could not be 21 divided among his brothers* Sikandar Lodi, while granting land to an Afghan noble, had to remind him that the iqta was granted to him in his personal capacity and not because he was a 22 relative of the deceased ncdole* These practices, whereby iqta came to be regarded as hereditary was in contravention of the Muslim law; a grant making 29 Iqta hereditary would autanatically become null and void.^^ One of the important reasons for the incapacity of the Sultans to control the nobility in its overriding ambitions, as sugaest- ed by S.B.P* Nigairi, was that the monarchs theirselves were nobles and ccmld be accepted w l y as the first among the equals O A by the nobility* The sultans tried to assert their authority given by the religion* What policy should be adopted by the sultan towards the ncjbility ? Was he to keep before him the model of Ala-ud*din Khilji, who refrained from giving nany assignments for fear 25 of rebellicm 7 O r was he to follow^the footsteps of Firuz Shah Tughltiq# who was very liberal with land assignments ? In any case complete removal of nobility was impossible and never tried by any Delhi Sultan* The Mughals inherited the system and no Mughal £mperor, however strong, destroyed it* Strong rulers like Sher Shah an:;^ Akbar tried to keep it within limits* During the absence of Akbar on his Kabul campaign#^ the jagir system came to be firmly established* Akbar, in 1561-82, issued orders by which the regulations followed in the Khalsa lands, the lands reserved to produce cash income for the central cfovemment, were also to be followed In the jagir lands* The jagirdars and the zamindars in the opinion of Satish Chan^ra^® formed the dominant class in the medieval society* 30 v/hile the^zamindara w«re the hereditary landlords, called by €Mirly writers as Rais and Thakurs, jagirdars were the assignees of revenue called iqtadars or muqta and later jagirdara* "The 27 iqtadar, Satish Chandra says, “was expected to collect the state dues, and to defray the sanctioned expmses Including his personal expenses out of the income"* The jagirdar was to maintain a fixed contingent for t-^ie service of the Emperor "and^his own expenses* The jagir was, however, essentially the assignment of revenue, and did not primarily involve any 28 administrative charge* The Jagir was ncxi>hereditary, meant for service and was liable for transfers* The jagirdar had no rights in land; he could collect his dues either directly from the peasants or through the zamindars* Mansabdari System Though the mansabdari system started by Akbar can be trac<?^ to the early military organizations of the Delhi Sultans, the mansabdari system was different from it* The main character- 29 istics of the system under Akbar were two* Firstly, the mansabdars, t^ether high or low, were directly subordinate to the Emperor; the subor^i^inate officers of a mansabdar were not mansabdars* Secondly, the system had a dual nature; it was represented by two numbers* The first number designated zat (persOTal) and the second sawar (cavalry); while the first indicated the salary and the positIto of the mansabdar, the seccxid denoted the strength of the cavalry that he was expected 3i to maintain* The mansabdari systesn was not exclusively for military services; it was used for civil services also* In the mansabdari system changes were introduced by the successors of Akbar. The first important change was the introduction of ^ aspa sih aspa ranks, intended to increase the sawar rank in practice thouoh not in writing* The practice was ctxitinued with greater frequency by Shah Jahan and also by Aurangzib, who qave, in writing also, sawar rank hiaher than the zat rank* The second chanoe was the introduction of the month ratios by Shah Jahan. Both the changes were necessitated for economy and to favour able and experienced officers, which were scarce during the later half of Aurangzeb's reign* How Marathas came to adopt saranlam svstewi Changing attitude towards saranlam system The assignment of land for service, whether civil and/or military, was a firmly established system and a legacy of the Muslim rule, when Shivaji became the ruler of the Swarajya* He was, it appears, fully aware of its merits and demerits* In the mountainous monsocai region of the Swarajya, with very difficult means of communications, there could be no altejma- tive to the system of land assignment* Yet, he was also aware that giving free scope to the assignees, like the watandars.