Storia do Mogor 374.3

374.3

There are throughout the realm officials who look after what I have spoken of. However, those who are distant from the court do not conduct themselves either as loyal subjects or good administrators. They make a profit from the gifts and grants offered to them, and therefore neglect what they ought to do as a matter of duty and obligation. Thus men who ought to maintain, for example, fifty horses or so, do not keep in their stable more than four or eight. What is worse, they entertain not a single soldier, though the neglect is good for their purse. Some of these (? the horses) are marked with brands as above referred to. Throughout the world the vice is rampant of being ambitious for the acquisition of wealth. But in no part of the world is this so much the case as in the Mogul Empire and the rest of India. There our Italian proverb applies : ' The big fish eat the little ones.' Particularly is it true at the court and in the army of the Mogul, where the captains and generals observe no fixed rules in paying their soldiers, conforming neither to the rank they have granted them nor to the men's merit. The rank the soldiers receive is high in name, but as for the pay, it is never more than half what the rank indicates.