The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c20.386

v3.c20.386

Muhammad may be compared, in his devotion to the details of administration, with Philip II of Spain, and one of his earliest acts was to order the compilation of a register of the revenue and expenditure of the provinces of his kingdom. The governors of provinces were directed to send to the capital all the materials for the compilation of such a register, and during the first few years of the reign a large number of clerks and officials was employed in the Palace of the Thousand Pillars at Delhi in the work of compilation. The object of the measure seems to have been to introduce a uniform standard of land revenue and to ensure that no village in the kingdom remained unassessed or unvisited by collectors. The register already maintained for the districts in the neighbourhood of the capital served as a model for the larger work, and the revenue exacted from these districts as a standard for the assessment of the more distant provinces, but we have unfortunately no details of the principles on which allowance was made for the different classes of soil, for distance from markets and the other considerations which affect the assessment of the land revenue in India.