The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c22: Chapter XVI. The Revenue System of the Mughul Empire
The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c22
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Chapter XVI. The Revenue System of the Mughul Empire
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THE fiscal resources of the Mughul empire may be considered in two main divisions—central and local. The local revenue, which was apparently collected and disbursed without reference to the central finance authorities, was derived from a bewildering variety of petty taxes and duties levied on production and consumption, on trades and occupations, on various incidents of social life, and most of all on transport. There is nothing to be said for this mass of imposts except that the system was accepted by the people as traditional, that it prevailed outside the empire as well as within, and that it can be traced back at any rate to the days of the Maurya rulers. In the fourteenth century these imposts had been forbidden in the mass by Fīrūz Tughluq as being contrary to Islamic law. The prohibition was renewed on other grounds by Akbar, and it was repeated by Aurangzīb,¹ but the effect of these orders was transitory, and the system maintained itself up to the close of the Mughul period.
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¹ River tolls, and also exactions by assignees were prohibited by Jahāngīr.
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The central sources of revenue were by comparison few in number; they may be classed as Commerce, Mint, Presents, Inheritance, Salt, Customs, Poll-tax, and Land. From time to time the state took an active part in commerce, but its operations were fiscally important only when they involved a monopoly of particular commodities; these monopolies ordinarily concerned munitions, such as lead or saltpetre, but occasionally other articles were affected, the most noteworthy case being the general monopoly of indigo created by Shāh Jahān in 1633, which, however, was quickly broken by the opposition of the foreign buyers. The working of the mints was commonly farmed, so that they must be regarded as a source of revenue; the yield is not recorded, but it cannot have been large so long as the prescribed standards of the currency were maintained.
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Court etiquette required that presents of substantial value should be offered to the emperor on various occasions, and ordinarily these were worth much more than the presents given in return; an idea of their fiscal importance can be formed from the fact that under Shāh Jahān, when the incidence was heaviest, the presents given at the new year, the chief ceremonial occasion, totalled from one to three million rupees in different years, from which must be deducted the value, whatever it was, of what was given by the emperor in return. As regards inheritance, the state claimed all the property left by its officers, and the claim was extended on occasion to the estates of wealthy merchants; anything relinquished for the maintenance of families and dependants was a matter of favour. The whole claim was formally abandoned by Aurangzīb, but there are some indications that his orders were not carried out in their entirety. Income from this source necessarily fluctuated; a particular officer might leave a really large sum, such as Āsaf Khān’s fortune of twenty-five millions of rupees in the reign of Shāh Jahān, but such great accumulations were necessarily rare, while many officers died in debt or left very little for the treasury.
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There was no uniform system of taxing salt, and some important sources were controlled locally; the mines in the Punjab and the salt lake at Sāmbhar in Rājputāna were, however, administered by the state. The income from these sources was apparently brought to account as part of the land-revenue, and cannot be stated in precise figures, but on the basis of the available statistics it cannot have been more than about one million rupees. Compared with the present standards, customs duties were formally low, ranging from 5 per cent. downwards, but in practice their incidence was seriously increased by arbitrary over-valuation, and by extra charges for prompt clearance of goods. Some idea of the magnitude of the customs revenue can be formed from the fact that in the middle of the seventeenth century the port of Surat, at that time by far the most important source, was reckoned to yield half a million rupees a year, after the cost of its administration had been met.
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The *jizya*, or poll-tax, which according to strict Islamic law was payable only by Jews and Christians, had been claimed by some earlier Muslim rulers from their Hindu subjects. The claim was formally abandoned by Akbar, and in the Mughul period it was first asserted by Aurangzīb. Under effective administration the yield might have been substantial, but this condition was not present, and probably was unattainable in the circumstances of the time; the amount actually realised is not recorded in the published authorities for the period.
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All these sources of the central revenue, taken together, were quite small when compared with the land-revenue, which was reckoned at more than ninety millions of rupees in the latter part of Akbar’s reign, and at 220 millions in the larger empire of Shāh Jahān. The disparity is indeed sufficient to justify the practice traditional in India, and adopted in the remainder of this chapter, of using the word “revenue” in the restricted sense of land-revenue. The burden on the land was increased further by the levy of cesses, proportionate to the revenue, or charged on the unit of cultivation, as the case might be, some of them general and permanent, others local and temporary; but the authorities say very little about these, and no estimate can be formed of the aggregate addition which they made to the burdens of the peasant. The remainder of this chapter is devoted to Revenue in the restricted sense, beginning with a general view of the agrarian system of the country, and then describing the course of events during the Mughul period.
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The Mughuls did not, as has sometimes been suggested, introduce a new revenue system into northern India; they took over the system which they found in operation, a system which in its main lines was consistent with Islamic law, as well as with the sacred law of Hinduism on which it was ultimately based. Under the sacred law occupation of land for production involved a liability to pay a share of the produce to the state, which determined within certain limits the amount of the share, and regulated the methods of assessment and collection. Under Islamic law a conqueror was authorised to dispossess infidel occupants, and distribute their lands among his followers; but if he permitted the infidels to remain in possession, as was usually done in India, he was entitled to claim from them a share of the produce, to be assessed and collected as he thought best, and to be applied for the benefit of Muslims in general, or in practice as the revenue of the state which he established. Thus the ordinary Indian peasant was not necessarily affected by conquest; he remained on the land, but he came under a new master, who might possibly increase his burdens, or more probably fall in for the moment with the arrangements which he found in existence. Under this system there were three questions of immediate interest to both the parties—the amount of the share claimed by the state, the method of its assessment, and the arrangements for collecting the sums due; these three points will be noticed in order, but something must first be said of the position occupied by the peasant.
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The face of the country was divided into villages in the Indian sense of the word, which is very nearly that of the English “civil parish”, denoting a specific area of land, usually but not necessarily inhabited, originating probably more or less at haphazard, but defined and recognised for administrative purposes. Most villages, though not all, were occupied and managed by what appears to be a very old institution, a brotherhood or community of peasants, acknowledging, and united by, the tie of common ancestry. Each member of the brotherhood held in separate possession the land which he cultivated, and enjoyed the fruits of his labour; but in the management of the affairs of the village the members acted as a body, their agents being the headmen, chosen from among themselves according to the custom of the locality. The headmen could let to tenants the land not required by members of the brotherhood, and they represented the village in its dealings with the administration; the extent of their powers varied in different regions, but they were everywhere important; and in those villages where a brotherhood did not exist, headmen were usually appointed by external authority for the discharge of similar functions. Each village had a hereditary registrar or accountant,¹ who maintained records of cultivation, receipts, and payments, and assisted the headmen in the performance of the duties which have just been described.
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¹ Known in northern India as *patwārī*, in Gujarāt as *talātī*, in the Bombay Deccan as *kulkarni*, and in Madras as *karnam*.
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The villages were grouped into larger units known as *parganas*, which were also recognised for administrative purposes. There was a headman (*chaudhrī*) in each *pargana*; his functions in the Muslim period are not described in the authorities, but he received orders from the administration, and exercised some sort of local jurisdiction. There was also a registrar or accountant (*qānūngo*) for the *pargana*; the post was ordinarily hereditary, and its holder was the repository of local agrarian knowledge, and, as the name implies, the interpreter of local customs on whom foreign administrators relied.
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The nature of the peasants' tenure cannot be described accurately in the precise legal terms now in use. When a peasant not belonging to the brotherhood was allowed by the headmen to cultivate land in the village, the conditions of his tenure were primarily matters for agreement between the two parties, and anything like uniformity cannot be postulated; but it is probable that, while such agreements were ordinarily made for a single year, the terms tended to be repeated until they became customary in the eyes of both parties, so that arbitrary ejectment or enhancement would have been viewed with disfavour, provided always that the tenant paid the stipulated sums. The amount of a tenant's payment was not usually fixed in the lump, but was made up of the revenue due on his cultivation, together with a proportionate addition representing the profit of the brotherhood; and consequently it would vary with any alteration made in the assessment of the village.
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As regards the members of the brotherhood, there is no doubt that, subject to due payment of the revenue, their connection with the village was regarded as a settled fact; and if a village was deserted owing to economic or administrative pressure, there was a general understanding that the brotherhood could return and occupy it if they chose to do so. Individual members of the brotherhood could transmit their land to their heirs, and could transfer it by sale or mortgage, but always subject to the fundamental condition that the revenue due was paid. Under Hindu law a peasant could be ejected for inefficiency, and possibly for other reasons also; no similar provision has been traced in the extant official documents of the Muslim period, but these establish the fact that peasants could be flogged for failure to produce adequate crops, while sale of a peasant's wife and children, although not of the peasant himself, was a recognised process for the recovery of arrears.
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The explanation of this position, which appears so anomalous at the present day, is to be found in the fact that neither Hindu textwriters nor Muslim administrators were concerned primarily with peasants' rights. In Hindu law, the emphasis is on the peasant's duty to cultivate land and pay the revenue; and the same idea persisted throughout the Muslim period, when failure to cultivate, or to pay, was regarded as tantamount to rebellion. So long as a peasant performed his duty, there would be no reason for displacing him, while if he failed in his duty, his displacement would follow as a matter of course, provided that a more efficient successor was available. This proviso is, however, important. During the Muslim period competition for productive land was not general; in most places land was waiting for peasants with the material resources needed for its cultivation; and an inefficient peasant might be better than none at all. In such circumstances the essence of successful administration was to keep peasants on the land, not to turn them off it.
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The operation of these ideas can be traced in documents issued in the Muslim period by the Revenue Ministry, an organisation which was, of course, controlled by the ruler of the time, but which appears to have preserved its continuity during periods of violent political change, and to have maintained a permanent departmental tradition of its own. To attract peasants to vacant land, to induce peasants to extend the area tilled, to secure improvement in the class of crops grown, these were the permanent ideals, though in practice they might often be masked by the need or the greed of the moment.
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The texts are not absolutely in accordance regarding the share of produce which a Hindu king might claim from the peasants without sin, but the commonest figure is one-sixth, which might be increased in emergencies to one-fourth, or even one-third. How far practice conformed to theory in this matter is doubtful; some cases which have been studied in detail indicate that the share actually taken in particular Hindu kingdoms was nearer one-half than one-sixth, but they are too few to form the basis of a confident generalisation. There is no similar arithmetical limitation in Islamic law; the sovereign has a free hand, subject only to the warning emphasised in the early texts that he should avoid discouraging production by excessive burdens. In Muslim India it may be said in a general way that the claim usually varied from one-third to one-half; and, in the economic conditions which prevailed, it is probable that the lower proportion was not far short of the danger-point, where production would begin to be checked, while the higher proportion was almost certainly injurious. There is nothing in the contemporary authorities to show that any deductions were allowed before the produce was divided, but it is not improbable that some small customary provision was made in this way for charity and for the menial servants employed in the village.
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As regards methods of assessment, the primitive plan of dividing the produce of each field at harvest is open to obvious practical objections, and for an indefinite period the usual practice of the country has been to estimate the yield of the growing crop, and charge the grower on the estimate, dividing the produce only in those cases—ordinarily very rare—where the accuracy of the estimate is disputed. Under these arrangements, which are conveniently described as Sharing, by division or by estimation as the case may be, the grower's liability varies from season to season both with the area sown and with the yield harvested. In the common alternative called Measurement, a fixed charge, either in cash or in produce, is made on each unit of area sown, and the grower takes the whole risk, being in theory liable for the full charge even when the crop has failed; but in practice it was usually necessary to remit a portion of the state's claim in unfavourable seasons. These two methods of assessment—Sharing and Measurement—persisted side by side throughout the Muslim period, but at some uncertain epoch there emerged a third, which may be called Contract; under it the individual peasant came to terms with the assessor, or with the headman, to pay a stated sum for his holding, independent of the area he might sow or the crop he might reap, so that his position was substantially that of a tenant at the present day. Finally, in some parts of the country there was a fourth method, the Plough-rent, which is not easy to reconcile with the terms of the sacred law, and is perhaps even older; under it, a stated charge was made on each plough and team, the unit of productive power, and the owner of the team was free to cultivate as much land as he could, and in whatever way he chose.
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Under each of these methods the demand on the peasant might be made either in cash or in produce at the option of the state, the amount of produce due being valued at current prices when payment was required in cash. Collection in kind was doubtless the earlier practice, but throughout the Muslim period cash payment was the general rule, though produce continued to be paid in some backward areas, and in two recorded instances cash payments were suspended to meet financial emergencies.
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The modern idea that collection of State dues should be made by salaried officials directly from the person liable is not generally applicable to India during the Muslim period. The practice existed, and on occasion was enforced over wide areas by individual administrators; but the general rule was to delegate the work of collection to one class or another of a heterogeneous group, whom it is convenient to describe collectively as Intermediaries, and who in practice frequently decided on the method of assessment to be applied within their charge. The main classes of Intermediaries were Chiefs, Headmen, Farmers, and Assignees.
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Under Muslim rule large areas of the country were left in the possession of Hindu chiefs who had, at any rate, a claim to sovereignty, but had submitted to the Muslim rulers on terms which preserved to them internal jurisdiction; these terms might include the payment of a fixed tribute, or merely the personal service of the chief with his troops, but in either case the Muslim administration did not ordinarily interfere with assessment or collection of the revenue, so long as the terms were observed. If a chief defaulted, the result was ordinarily a punitive expedition, and either his displacement or a revision of the terms previously in force; but so long as he remained loyal, he enjoyed the revenue of his territories subject to the payment of the stipulated tribute, if any.
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The position of a chief depended partly on the accessibility of his territory, and partly on the strength of his clan. In broken country, remote from an administrative centre, even a petty chief might maintain himself for an indefinite period merely or mainly because his possessions were not worth annexing; in the open plains a chief who was the head of a numerous and martial clan settled in a compact area might survive because his fighting strength made him a dangerous enemy but a valuable ally. The chronicles tell us little of such chiefs, but their importance in the Muslim period can be inferred from the number who survived into the nineteenth century, not only in Rājputāna and Central India, where many of them were accepted as princes, but also in large areas in Bihār and the United Provinces, where they usually became landholders.
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It was a common practice for the revenue assessors to come to terms with the headmen year by year for the revenue to be paid by the village as a whole; the sum to be paid was fixed on a consideration of the productive resources of the village, but was not assessed directly on the separate portions of cultivated land, or on the individual peasants. When this arrangement was made, the headmen distributed the burden of the revenue according to the custom of the village, collected each peasant's quota, paid the authorities in lump sums, and bore the brunt of official severity in case of default.
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The practice of farming the revenue of a village, or larger area, is of old standing in India; the farmer engaged to pay a lump sum, hoping to collect more from the peasants, and so make a profit for himself. Almost up to the end of the Muslim period the duration of such farms was very short, one year being an ordinary term; but in the eighteenth century the duration tended to become indefinite, and in practice the position might even become hereditary.
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Assignment was, however, the most distinctive institution of the period. Every officer of the State was entitled to receive an income defined precisely in cash, out of which he had ordinarily to maintain a specified force of cavalry, available for the service of the ruler at any time; but for all the more important officers payment of this income in cash was the exception. Ordinarily an officer's claim was satisfied by assignment of the revenue of an area estimated to yield the income due to him, and the assignee thereupon assumed the administration of that area, assessing and collecting the revenue, and endeavouring to obtain from it at least the amount of his claim, and if possible something more. The assignee thus stood to the peasants in the position of the state, and, subject to any restrictions imposed on him by authority, he had a free hand in the administration; he could assess and collect the revenue of each peasant through his servants, or he could deal with the headmen of the villages, or he could hand them over to farmers. Throughout the Muslim period the great bulk of the cultivated land was ordinarily in the hands of assignees, but certain tracts, described as *khālisa*, were reserved to provide the treasury with cash, and were managed by the Revenue Ministry on one or other of the systems already described.
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The foregoing analysis is necessary for descriptive purposes, but, taken by itself, it might give a misleading idea of rigidity in what was essentially a flexible structure. It was a simple and natural arrangement for a salaried staff working at a distance to undertake to supply a stated net income, instead of rendering complicated and detailed accounts of receipts and expenditure, and collectors could thus easily be transformed into farmers. A farmer holding for an indefinite term could assume a position not distinguishable in practice from that of a tribute-paying chief; a village headman might in favourable circumstances become a village autocrat, and, by taking farms of neighbouring villages, raise himself by degrees to a similar position; and in periods when the central authority was weak such tendencies might operate to transform the conditions prevailing over large areas.
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From these preliminary explanations we may turn to the history of the subject during the Mughul period. There is no formal description of the revenue system in force in northern India at the opening of the sixteenth century; but incidental notices in the chronicles show that under the Lodī dynasty the great bulk of the kingdom was held in assignment by the Afghān leaders who constituted its effective strength. They show also that in practice the assignees enjoyed a free hand in regard to assessment, as well as in the treatment of any minor chiefs whose lands lay within their assignments; and the only record of interference by the king is an order issued by Ibrāhīm Lodī prohibiting the assignees from taking revenue in cash, an order which appears to have been justified by the prevailing scarcity of silver currency. In the absence of any record of a change, it may be assumed that these arrangements persisted in their main lines under Bābur and Humāyūn, and the basis of Akbar's distinctive system is to be found in the reorganisation effected by Sher Shāh.
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As depicted in the chronicles Sher Shāh stands out as a masterful and tireless administrator of the Indian type, attending personally to every detail of the business of his kingdom, and introducing large changes of system in what would now be thought a very summary manner; but his reign was too short to furnish a final test of the suitability of the measures he introduced. He stands out also as the only ruler of northern India who is known to have acquired practical experience in the detailed work of assessing and collecting revenue, for as a young man he had brought into order the assignment held by his father from the Lodī dynasty. The chronicler’s account of his activities at this time shows that he had already accepted the principles which later on he was to apply on a larger scale in northern India; he believed in maintaining direct relations with the individual peasants, he distrusted the village headmen, and he regarded equitable assessment and strict collection as the two essentials of revenue administration.
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The share of the produce which he claimed at this time is not on record; but after his accession to the throne in the year 1540 the general proportion taken from the kingdom, apart from one favoured region, was one-third, and probably this was not an innovation, but was a standard already familiar in practice. The method of assessment adopted was measurement, the charge on each unit of area sown being a stated weight of produce. The authorities do not indicate clearly whether the peasants were now required to pay in cash or in grain; the former is more probable, because Ibrāhīm’s order for grain-payments was the result of scarcity of currency, and this difficulty must have disappeared under Sher Shāh, who reorganised the currency and coined both silver and copper in large quantities. The distinctive feature of the new arrangements was the way in which the demand on the peasants was calculated. Standard yields of each staple crop were calculated or estimated—how this was done is not recorded—separately for three classes of land, described as “good”, “middling”, and “inferior”; the average of these figures was struck; and one-third of the average was claimed as revenue from each unit of area, whatever its actual yield might be. The effect was necessarily to overcharge the bad land, and to undercharge the good; in the case of wheat, for instance, the charge works out at about 24 per cent. of the estimated produce of “good” land, while on “inferior” land it was 48 per cent. The inequality would, however, naturally adjust itself by variations in the crops grown, so that excessive charges would tend to be eliminated.
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On one point of great practical importance the authorities are ambiguous; it is uncertain whether these standard yields were calculated separately for each agricultural tract, or whether single standards were adopted for the kingdom as a whole. If the latter course was followed, over-pressure on the less productive regions must, in an extensive kingdom, have led to a complete breakdown on the occurrence of unfavourable seasons; if the former, the arrangements might have been reasonably successful; but, as has been said above, the reign was too short for them to be adequately tested, and the political instability of the years intervening between the death of Sher Shāh and the accession of Akbar was such as to mask the operation of economic factors.
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As regards the method of collection, Sher Shāh granted assignments as his predecessors had done; there is nothing on record to indicate that he curtailed the freedom which assignees had previously enjoyed, though the general character of his administration renders this not improbable. We may be confident that his methods were followed closely in the tracts reserved for the treasury, and we may conjecture that, to a varying extent, they prevailed also in assignments.
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The historical importance of Sher Shāh’s methods lies in the fact that they formed the starting-point of the series of experiments in administration which marked the first half of Akbar’s reign. Much information regarding these experiments is furnished by the authorities, but they are in some respects incomplete, while their language is highly technical; particular statements divorced from their context may easily be misunderstood; and the account which follows, based on study of the authorities as a whole, differs substantially from much which has been written on the subject in the past. It deals in order, first, with the experiments in assessment made in the heart of the empire, from the Punjab to Bihār; next, with the practice in regard to assignments; and then with the working of the arrangements finally adopted for the empire as a whole.
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In the early years of Akbar’s reign the revenue was assessed by measurement, and the demand made on the peasants was based on a schedule of assessment rates which had been prepared under Sher Shāh: as has been said above, it is uncertain whether Sher Shāh used one schedule or several, but under Akbar there is no doubt that only one was employed. From the outset the demand was made in cash, the produce due under the schedule being valued at prices fixed by order of the emperor. These arrangements could not be made to work satisfactorily: nor is it possible that they could have worked for long. Just at first, the prices fixed for valuing the produce were uniform for the whole empire, and were apparently based on those which ruled in the vicinity of the court. In the tenth year of the reign varying local prices were substituted for the uniform scale previously used; but this measure, though obviously an improvement, did not suffice to remove the difficulties, and three years later the use of Sher Shāh’s schedule was abandoned so far as the reserved areas were concerned, though seasonal cash-rates continued to be calculated from it, presumably for the use of assignees. For the reserved areas a more summary procedure was introduced, which is not explained in detail; probably it was assessment through the headmen, though it is possible that in some cases farms were given.
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These summary assessments must be regarded as a temporary measure, intended merely to tide over the emergency, for in the fifteenth year of the reign (1570–71) new schedules of assessment rates, applicable to all land whether assigned or reserved, were brought into force throughout the country. According to my reading of the authorities, the new schedules were of precisely the same form as the old, showing the demand to be made on the peasant as one-third of the average estimated produce; the difference lay in the fact that the average produce was now estimated separately for each *pargana*, and not for the empire as a whole, thus eliminating the difficulties which had resulted from ignoring local differences in productivity. The demand was still stated in terms of produce, and the prices at which it was valued in each season required the emperor’s sanction.
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These new schedules were worked out by the *qānūngos*, each for his own *pargana*, under the supervision of Rājā Todar Mal, who was now associated with Muzaffar Khān in the charge of the Revenue Ministry, and was in practice its effective head. Todar Mal’s early history is obscure. He has been identified by some modern writers with one Todar Khattrī, who was employed by Sher Shāh in building the fort of Rohtās, and it has been assumed that he was connected with the revenue administration from that time onward; but the identification is not supported by anything in the contemporary chronicles, and the mere name is scarcely an adequate basis for a confident conclusion. In Akbar’s reign he emerges first in the year 1565, when he was performing military duties; and from 1570 to his death in 1589 he fills a conspicuous place in the chronicles, sometimes as a successful commander in the field, sometimes as the Revenue Minister, to which post he returned from successive military expeditions, always as a highly competent and exceptionally honest officer, who at the same time was not easy to work with owing to his ill-temper, obstinacy, and vindictiveness.
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The assessment schedules which were introduced in 1570–71 remained in force for ten years, and apparently they were found suitable, so far as the claim, stated in produce, was concerned; but recurring difficulties in calculating the seasonal cash-demand eventually led to their abandonment. The prices at which the produce-claim should be valued had to be sanctioned by the emperor, separately for each region and for each season. The emperor was constantly on the move, the distances to be covered increased with the expansion of the empire, the issue of orders was delayed, and the whole business of assessment and collection was thereby hindered, to the inconvenience of everyone concerned; while, in addition, the reports of local prices, on which the emperor’s orders were based, were suspected in some cases to be fraudulent. Akbar met the emergency by deciding to discard schedules stated in produce, and to fix assessment rates in cash, which could be applied, season by season, to the area actually cropped without the need for recurring references to the court.
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For this purpose the *parganas* were grouped into what would now be called assessment circles on the basis of agricultural homogeneity, and for each circle a schedule of rates was framed showing the amount of money to be demanded on the unit area of each crop, known as *bīgha*; the size of this unit varied within wide limits, but the *bīgha* to which the schedules refer was probably a little less than five-eighths of an acre. The range of the rates was extensive; one schedule, which may be taken as a fair sample, shows that small millets were charged 11 *dām*, large millets from 25 to 30, barley 40, wheat 60, sugarcane and indigo 120, and betel 220 *dām*, the *dām* being approximately one-fortieth of a rupee. Such figures make it easy to understand why the Revenue Ministry consistently pressed for improvement in the class of crops; a change from cereals to sugarcane for instance would immediately double or treble the revenue due from the area affected.
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Contemporary descriptions of this reform are incomplete, but apparently the method adopted was to strike an average for each circle of the cash-demand rates which had been used within that circle during the ten years for which Todar Mal's schedules had been in operation. It is uncertain whether these averages were adjusted, or were used as they worked out; but the schedules, in which the rates are given in thousandths of a rupee, show that no attempt was made to secure round or convenient figures for the recurring calculations, and it is probable that no formal adjustments were made.
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With these schedules of rates stated in cash, the process of seasonal assessment was simple. When the crops were showing above ground, measuring parties were sent into the villages to record the areas which had been sown. From these field records the total area sown by each peasant was extracted, crop by crop, care being taken to exclude areas where sowings had failed; the sanctioned assessment rates were then used to calculate the total revenue due from that peasant; and the sums due from each peasant were brought together in an assessment statement for the village, on the basis of which collections were made at harvest, though the rules provided for adjustments required by injury to crops after the assessment had been made.
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So far as the chronicles show, this method of assessment remained in force until the end of Akbar's reign, but its application was not absolutely rigid. One case is recorded where the sanctioned charges were temporarily raised. Akbar's prolonged residence in Lahore had resulted in a marked rise of local prices, and the revenue demand was increased by 20 per cent. in the area affected, but this temporary increase was discontinued when the emperor left the Punjab in the year 1598. No other increase of the same kind is recorded, but the silence of the chronicles is not conclusive in such matters. On the other hand, a series of exceptionally good seasons occurring in the country between Delhi and Allāhābād from 1585 to 1590 led to such a fall of prices that the revenue could not be paid, and large remissions had to be granted—by assignees as well as in the lands reserved for the treasury. There is no record of remissions having been made in years when the crops were bad, and we may assume that this eventuality was considered to be met by the standing provisions mentioned above for the exclusion of areas where sowings had failed, and for adjusting the assessment to meet subsequent injuries.
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We now pass from assessments to assignments. In the opening years of Akbar's reign, officers were ordinarily remunerated by assignment, and a difficulty emerged which must always have been latent in the system. An eastern autocrat was bound to be liberal, if he was to retain the services of an adequate and competent staff; and liberality was even more indispensable in the case of an autocracy in the making, the position which Bairam Khān as regent for Akbar had to face. It is no matter for surprise therefore that the cost of establishment should have grown more quickly than the resources of what was a relatively small empire, and that the Revenue Ministry should have found itself unable to make assignments sufficient to cover the salaries granted by the regent. The way in which the difficulty was met was characteristic of the times. For the purpose of allocating assignments the Ministry maintained registers, which may be called "the Valuation of the Empire", or more shortly, "the Valuation", showing the income which each local area might be expected to yield, one year with another, to the assignee. When orders for assignments could not be met in full, the figures in the valuation were arbitrarily raised, so that the orders could be carried out on paper, but the assignee would in fact be unable to realise the income to which he was entitled. The inevitable result was dissatisfaction throughout the staff of the empire, and corruption inside the Ministry.
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The original record having thus become worthless, Akbar in the year 1566 ordered the preparation of a new valuation, which was duly effected, but it went the way of the first, being corruptly falsified; and by 1573 the dissatisfaction in the state service was such that the emperor decided, with the concurrence, or perhaps at the suggestion, of Rājā Todar Mal, to pay salaries in cash, and to bring practically the whole of northern India directly under the Revenue Ministry. For this purpose the country was divided into circles, each estimated to yield, when fully developed, a crore (*karor*) of *dām* (250,000 rupees), and a staff of officials was posted to each circle with instructions to press on agricultural development as quickly as possible; the officer in charge of the circle was officially designated '*Āmil*, or '*Amalguzār*, that is to say, Administrator, but popularly he became known as *Karorī*, a soubriquet derived from the nominal extent of his charge, and eventually this designation passed into the official language. These arrangements lasted for five years. In 1579–80 a new valuation was made, calculated on the precise data furnished by the ten years’ operation of Todar Mal’s assessment rates, and the practice of assignment again became general, though this fact is not formally recorded in the chronicles. The reasons for the change are matters for conjecture. The most probable view is that the introduction of cash salaries was intended from the first as a temporary measure, pending the time when data for a trustworthy valuation should become available; but in any case the reversion to the practice of assignment may have been hastened by the occurrence of grave scandals in the revenue administration.
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The large and sudden extension of direct assessment and collection was obviously an enterprise requiring careful supervision. This requirement was provided at the outset, for the initial measures were planned by Rājā Todar Mal, and executed by the staff which he had chosen; but shortly afterwards he was called away for military duty, and the charge of the Revenue Ministry devolved on Khvāja Shāh Mansūr, who, it may be assumed, followed the usual practice of the period, and replaced the existing staff by his own nominees. A period of corruption and extortion ensued, which brought the revenue administration into disrepute, and operated to restrict cultivation, and thereby reduce the financial resources of the empire, which it had been hoped to increase. When, after the execution of Shāh Mansūr for treason in 1581, Rājā Todar Mal resumed effective charge of the Ministry, he issued orders for the prevention of such malpractices in future, and at the same time took drastic action against the officials suspected of misconduct, calling them to account for the sums they had embezzled or extorted, and employing the traditional procedure, under which a suspect was detained in prison, and flogged, or otherwise tortured, periodically, until a satisfactory settlement was reached.
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These processes dragged on for some years, but were at last brought to a close by the intervention of Akbar, who appointed Amīr Fathullah Shīrāzī as an imperial commissioner (*Amīn-ul-mulk*) to dispose of the cases pending in the Revenue Ministry, and in effect to be at its head, though Todar Mal was not formally superseded. The commissioner performed his duties effectively, and drew up proposals, which were sanctioned by the emperor, for reforming the procedure of the Ministry in its relations with the local staff. This measure, introduced in 1585, practically completes the revenue history of the reign, so far as it finds a place in the chronicles. The only important change recorded in later years was the decision, taken in 1596, to bring the provincial revenue officers, now designated *Dīwān*, directly under the orders of the Ministry, thus relieving the viceroy of responsibility for revenue administration, and originating the administrative dyarchy which persisted until the collapse of the empire, with revenue business (*dīwānī*) conducted independently of the general administration (*faujdārī*).
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The result of the period of experiment which covered the first half of Akbar’s reign was to provide a workable revenue system for northern India; but the system was not applied to the outlying portions of the empire, each of which was treated as the local circumstances required. The standard, or “regulation”, system may be described as follows. The basis of the state’s claim on the peasant was still one-third of the produce, but the actual demand was made in the form of a sum of money, varying with the locality and with the crop, on each unit of area sown in each season. The bulk of northern India was assigned, and the detailed conduct of assessment and collection was in the hands of the assignees, who, however, were bound by the sanctioned schedules of assessment rates. The area reserved for the treasury was divided into circles, each in charge of a *karorī* or collector, who was under the orders of the provincial *dīwān*, himself responsible, at first to the viceroy, but afterwards directly to the Revenue Ministry. The collector was required to deal with established cultivation strictly in accordance with the regulation system; but he was under constant pressure to increase the revenue yielded by his circle by the two traditional processes, extension of cultivation and improvement in the class of crops; and, in order to attain these objects, he was allowed a considerable degree of latitude. Thus he was authorised to reduce the standard rates on the more remunerative crops, when this was necessary in order to secure an increase in the area under them; he could make temporary reductions in the schedules of rates in case of land which had gone out of cultivation, so as to stimulate its reclamation; for extension of tillage in waste land he could agree to almost whatever terms the peasants offered; and when the village headmen exerted themselves successfully with this object, he could allow them a substantial commission by way of reward. When the assessments fell due, the peasants were encouraged to bring their revenue personally to the local treasury, though collecting agents were also employed in the villages; and, speaking generally, it may be said that the distinctive feature of the system was the direct relationship which it established between the collector and the individual peasant, who was to be treated as an independent unit, encouraged to increase production, and assisted with loans for that purpose, but held firmly to the engagements into which he had entered.
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It will be obvious that the success or failure of this system must have depended entirely on the quality of the administration. The amount of detailed work, to be accomplished season by season under the strict time limit imposed by agricultural conditions, was very great; opportunities for extortion and oppression of individuals were numerous; and if there was dishonesty or inefficiency at the centre, the system must soon have broken down. There is no record of a collapse, or of a recurrence of scandals like those which occurred before the year 1581; but it must be borne in mind that our information regarding the closing years of the reign is much less detailed than for the earlier period. The most probable view is that, while the system worked reasonably well under Akbar, it disappeared under his successor, but definite evidence on this question is wanting.
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This regulation system extended, broadly speaking, to the plains of northern India, excluding the areas left in the hands of the Hindu chiefs, that is to say, to the provinces of Multān, Lahore, Delhi (excluding the Kumāūn hills), Āgra, Allahābād, and the bulk of Bihār; but the southern parts of the two last-named provinces, bordering on the unadministered region known as Gondwāna, were excluded from its operations, as was the hill-country lying between Bihār and Bengal. The system was in force also in those parts of Ajmer which were not left to the chiefs, and it is said to have been introduced in Mālwā, but the records regarding this province are obscure; the eastern portion, bordering on Gondwāna, and the western portion, bordering on Ajmer, were left to chiefs, while apparently some arrangements more simple than the regulation system were in force over a large part of the remainder of the province.
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In the outlying provinces, local practices were ordinarily continued. In the northern mountains—Kashmīr, Kābul and Qandahār—these practices were diversified, and too complex to be summarised in a few words; here as elsewhere, the basic idea was to take a share of the produce, but the share was ordinarily calculated by methods which gave an approximation to the system of measurement. In Sind one-third of the produce was claimed, and the demand was assessed by sharing. The records regarding Gujarāt are conflicting, but can be interpreted on the hypothesis that measurement was practised for a time, and then superseded by assessment on the village as a unit made with the headmen, or possibly with farmers. In Berār and (probably) Khāndesh such village assessments were the rule, and the same statement holds good of Bengal (including Orissa); contemporary authorities lend no support to the legend which was current at the end of the eighteenth century that Todar Mal made a detailed assessment on the individual peasants of Bengal. In most of these provinces large areas were left in the hands of chiefs, and thus were not assessed by the Revenue Ministry, or available for assignment.
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Precise information is wanting regarding the fiscal relations subsisting between Akbar and those chiefs who retained jurisdiction over their domains. It is possible that revenue was claimed, at least from some of them, in the form of a stipulated annual tribute, as had been the practice at earlier periods; but the obscure records which alone are available for the territories of the more important chiefs can also be interpreted on the theory that the emperor claimed nothing beyond loyal service, including of course the periodical presents which etiquette required, and that the Revenue Ministry recorded a chief’s territory as his assignment, valued at some arbitrary figure for the formal completion of its records.
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Before passing to the reign of Jahāngīr a few words may be said regarding the practice of alienating revenue in grants made by way of charity or favour. Such alienation was traditional. In Akbar’s time grants were officially described by the Turkī name *suyūrghāl*, but in the ordinary literature they appear as *milk* (domain), or *madad-i-ma‘āsh* (assistance to livelihood), terms which are not distinguishable in practice. The usual form of grant was an area of stated size, which at first seems to have consisted of land already cultivated. Akbar made it a rule that one-half of the grant should ordinarily be waste land, so that while the grantee could forthwith collect the revenue due from the peasants on the moiety under cultivation, he had to exert himself to bring the remainder of the land under the plough in order to obtain the full benefit of the emperor’s liberality. The grants were professedly charitable, and, in some cases at least, the formal document recited that the recipient had no other means of livelihood, but in practice this limitation was not strictly observed; they were made sometimes for the life of the grantee, sometimes for two generations, and sometimes for an indefinite term; but the records show that they could be resumed or revised at any time at the discretion of the administration.
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The business connected with these grants was transacted, not in the Revenue Ministry, but in a separate department, which was presided over by the *Sadr*, a high officer charged with supervision of the administration of Islamic law. The *Sadr* exercised very extensive powers, subject of course to the emperor’s personal intervention; and in practice the history of the office is one of profuse and sometimes corrupt liberality, punctuated by spasms of vigorous retrenchment. The tenure of a grant was thus insecure. A grantee might find himself deprived of some or all the land he held as the result of a change of policy, or of personnel; and on occasion he might be affected by a general order like that which was issued shortly after the year 1595, summarily reducing by one-half all the grants existing in the province of Gujarāt. On the other hand, influence and bribery might secure undisturbed possession, or the retention of land in excess of what had been granted; and such accounts as have survived of the working of the department indicate a thoroughly inefficient and corrupt administration. Some idea of the importance of these grants can be formed from the fact that in the statistics included in the *Āīn-i-Akbarī* the grants in the five northern provinces, from Lahore to Allahābād, amount to about 3½ per cent. of the total revenue.
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