The Institutes of Akbar 94: A'I'N 48. · ON FINES.

94

In order to prevent laziness, and to ensure attentiveness, His Majesty, as for all other departments, has fixed a list of fines. On the death of a male or a female kha'c'ah elephant, the Bhois are fined three months’ wages. If any part of the harness is lost, the Bhois and Met’hs are fined twothirds of the value of the article; but in the case of a saddle cloth, the full price. When a female elephant dies from starvation, or through want of care, the Bhois have to pay the cost price of the animal.
If a driver mixes drugs with the food of an elephant, to make the animal hot, and it dies in consequence thereof, he is liable to capital punishment, or to have a hand cut off, or to be sold as a slave. If it was a khāçah elephant, the Bhois lose three months’ pay, and are further suspended for one year.
Two experienced men are monthly dispatched, to enquire into the fatness or leanness of khāçah elephants. If elephants are found by them out of flesh, to the extent of a quarter, according to the scale fixed by the Pāgosht Regulation (vide Áín 83), the grandees in charge are fined, and the bhois are likewise liable to lose a month’s wages. In the case of Halqah elephants, Ahadis are told off to examine them, and submit a report to His Majesty. If an elephant dies, the Mahāwat and the Bhoi are fined three months’ wages. If part of an elephant’s tusk is broken, and the injury reaches as far as the kali—this is a place at the root of the tusks, which on being injured is apt to fester, when the tusks get hollow and become useless—a fine amounting to one-eighth of the price of the elephant is exacted, the dárogah paying two-thirds, and the Faujdár one-third. Should the injury not reach as far as the kali, the fine is only one-half of the former, but the proportions are the same. But, at present, a fine of one per cent. has become usual; in the case of khāçah elephants, however, such punishment is inflicted as His Majesty may please to direct.