2 - The Medieval Deccan and Maharashtra

Summary

Some glimpses can be obtained of the internal structure of ‘village communities’ only in the western Deccan for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Their structure seems to have been almost the same in the eastern Deccan as well, though there was some difference in the western coast area called Konkan.

The village of the medieval western Deccan was called gānva (from Sanskrit grāma), mauje (from Arabic mauż?), or Persian deh. These terms were used interchangeably, but formally mauje was prefixed to the proper name of the village. A bigger village containing a market-place (bājār, Persian bāżār) was called kasbe (from Arabic qasba).

The villages as a rule took the collective form of habitation. There, the ‘village-site’ was called pāndharī (literally ‘white’) and usually surrounded by earthen walls. Outside the village site there were agricultural lands called kālī (literally ‘black’). It is said that people originally inhabited the white soil unfit for cultivation and turned the black soil widely found in the Deccan into their agricultural fields. Beyond them there was village common or grassland called kuran or gāyerān (literally ‘waste land for cows’). The grassland meant for common use of villagers was termed ‘people's grassland’ (lokācā kuran) and that for fodder used by government was called ‘government's grassland’ (sarkārcā kuran).

Agricultural land (kālī) was divided into perhaps twenty to forty blocks called thal (from Sanskrit sthala = land), and each block had often a name that was probably the surname of the original proprietor or colonizer.