The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c20.299

v3.c20.299

This heavy and humiliating blow finally diverted ‘Alā-ud-dīn’s attention from vague and extravagant designs of conquest to the protection of the kingdom which he had so nearly lost. On his north-western frontier and between it and the capital he repaired all old fortresses, even the most important of which had long been shamefully neglected, built and garrisoned new ones, and devised a scheme for increasing largely the strength of his army. This was no easy matter, for his subjects were already taxed almost to the limit of their endurance, but he overcame the difficulty by means of his famous edicts which, by arbitrarily fixing the prices of all commodities, from the simple necessaries of life to slaves, horses, arms, silks and stuffs, enabled him to reduce the soldier’s pay without causing hardship or discontent, for the prices of necessaries and of most luxuries were reduced in proportion. Strange as the expedient may appear to a modern economist, it was less unreasonable than it seems, for the treasure which he had brought from the south and had so lavishly distributed had cheapened money and inflated prices. The fall in the purchasing value of money was, however, in those days of defective and imperfect means of transport and communication, largely restricted to the capital and the suburban area, which were the centre of wealth to a degree hardly comprehensible by those who use railways. Nevertheless, so drastic a measure necessarily met with much opposition, which ‘Alā-ud-dīn overcame, in the case of the grain-merchants, by prohibiting the purchase of grain elsewhere than at the state granaries, until the merchants were fain to agree to sell their stocks at a rate lower than originally fixed, and after surmounting a few initial difficulties he was able to maintain, through good years and bad, and without any real hardship to sellers, the scale of prices fixed by him. In the districts around the capital the land revenue was collected in kind, so that when scarcity threatened, in spite of edicts, to enhance prices, the king was enabled to flood the market with his own grain, and in the provinces the governors possessed the same power.