The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c22.29

v4.c22.29

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.