Jajmani system

History glossary

Topic: Mughal Agrarian Society and Economy · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 4 "Peasants, Zamindars and the State"

Meaning

The jajmani system is a later name, used by historians and sociologists, for a village arrangement in which artisan and service castes did fixed work for peasant or zamindar families, often over many generations, and were paid mostly with a fixed share of the harvest rather than cash [2]. It matters because the payment practices in Mughal villages were real, but the word itself was not used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Using it for the Mughal village is an anachronism (putting a later word into an earlier time), and this is a known exam trap.

Explanation

Background: artisans inside the village

  • Up to 25 per cent of village households were artisan households. This figure comes from Marathi documents and early British survey records.
  • The village service groups named in the sources were potters, blacksmiths, carpenters, barbers, and even goldsmiths.
  • Blacksmiths and carpenters mattered most to farming. They made and mended the plough, sickles and other iron tools.
  • The line between peasant and artisan was fluid (it kept shifting).
  • In the agricultural lulls (the slack weeks between sowing and harvest), peasants did craft work themselves.
  • This work included dyeing cloth, textile printing, firing pottery and repairing farm implements.
  • The same household could farm in one season and do craft work in another.

How artisans were paid: the practices later called "jajmani"

  • Way 1: a share of the harvest.
  • The artisan got a fixed part of the crop at harvest time.

  • The village panchayat (village council) often decided the share.

  • Way 2: land given for service.

  • The village gave the artisan a plot of land, in place of grain or along with it.

  • In Maharashtra this service land was hereditary (passed from father to son). It was called miras or watan.

  • Way 3: a bargain of goods for services.

  • This was a negotiated deal, not a fixed rule.

  • In eighteenth-century Bengal, zamindars paid blacksmiths, carpenters and goldsmiths a small daily allowance plus diet money (money for food).

  • Cash payment was also not unknown. Artisans could be paid in coin.

What the later term "jajmani" describes

  • Historians later used jajmani system as one label for all these service ties.
  • As later described, it had three features:
  • castes tied to one another;
  • one family doing set services for another family across generations;

  • payment by a fixed share in the harvest, not in cash [2].

  • Scholars argue about how far such a system really worked across the Indian countryside. In practice it existed side by side with many money-based exchanges [2].

  • NCERT's position: the word is later, and cash payment in Mughal villages was not unknown. So in answers, call these "service relations". Mention jajmani only as a later term.

Results: what this tells us about the Mughal village

  • It weakens the "little republic" picture.
  • Some nineteenth-century British officials imagined the Indian village as a little republic: a brotherly, equal group that needed nothing from outside.

  • A neat, cash-free, closed exchange of services would fit that picture. But the evidence shows bargaining, allowances and coin payments.

  • The village was linked to the wider economy by money (a cash nexus).

  • In the empire's heartland, revenue was assessed and collected in cash.
  • Export weavers worked on cash advances (money paid before the cloth was made).
  • Growers of cotton, silk and indigo got cash advances and wages too.
  • Tavernier said even a very small village had a shroff (a moneychanger who also worked as a banker).

Time, place and evidence

  • Period: the payment practices belong to the Mughal period, 16th–17th centuries. The Bengal example is from the eighteenth century. The label "jajmani" came much later; the study note calls it a 20th-century sociological label.
  • Regions named:
  • Maharashtra: hereditary service land called miras/watan.
  • Bengal: daily allowance plus diet money paid by zamindars.

  • The Mughal heartland: revenue collected in cash.

  • Evidence:

  • Marathi documents and early British survey records give the figure of up to 25 per cent artisan households.
  • Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605–89) was a French jewel merchant who made six voyages to the East between 1632 and 1668 [3].
  • His book Les six voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier came out in 1676. Its English version is known as Travels in India [3].

  • He recorded prices, the quality of goods, business practices and the currencies in use, so economic historians use his book as a source [3].

  • NCERT: Class 12, Chapter 4, "Peasants, Zamindars and the State".

Don't confuse with

  • Miras / watan: these were real terms used in Maharashtra for hereditary service land given to artisans. Jajmani is a later scholar's label, not a term used in that period.
  • "Little republic": this was a 19th-century British officials' idea of a self-sufficient, equal village. Jajmani is a label for service-payment ties. NCERT rejects both as a full picture of the Mughal village.
  • Bengal zamindars' allowances: in 18th-century Bengal, artisans got a daily allowance plus diet money through a negotiated deal. Jajmani, as later described, means a fixed harvest share handed down over generations [2].
  • Shroff: a village moneychanger-cum-banker (Tavernier). It is evidence of cash in the village, the opposite of the cash-free picture that jajmani suggests.

Prelims Hooks

  • The term jajmani was not in use in the 16th–17th centuries. It is a later label, and applying it to Mughal India is an anachronism.
  • In jajmani as later described, payment was normally a fixed share in the harvest, not cash [2].
  • Hereditary service land for artisans in Maharashtra was called miras or watan.
  • Artisans made up up to 25 per cent of village households. Source: Marathi documents and early British survey records.
  • The village panchayat often fixed the artisan's harvest share.
  • Trap: "Artisans in Mughal villages were never paid in cash." False: cash payment was not unknown, and Tavernier found a shroff even in small villages.

Mains Points

  • Use the jajmani label carefully. The practices were real: harvest shares, service land (miras/watan) and allowances. The name is a 20th-century sociological label, and scholars dispute how widely such a system worked [2]. A good answer says "service relations" and calls jajmani a later term.
  • Service ties did not make the village closed or cash-free.
  • Bargained deals (Bengal allowances and diet money) and coin payments existed alongside harvest shares.
  • Cash revenue, cash advances to weavers and indigo growers, and village shrofts all linked the village to the state and to world trade.

  • This helps answer the "little republic" question: the village was neither self-sufficient nor sealed off.

  • Continuity and change: hereditary, caste-based service ties ran alongside a growing money economy. The fluid peasant–artisan line (craft work in farming's slack seasons) shows that craft work was part of farming life. This helps explain how India produced large volumes of export textiles without factory towns.

Related concepts

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Sources

  1. 1Class 12, Ch 4 "Peasants, Zamindars and the State" (primary)
  2. 2Jajmani system | Characteristics & Factsbritannica.com · tier 3
  3. 3Les six voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier ... en Turquie, en Perse, et aux Indesloc.gov · tier 2