The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c20.445

v3.c20.445

When the king returned to Delhi the famine was at its worst, and the people were eating human flesh. He had been engaged, since his return from Sargadwārī, in devising schemes to restore prosperity to the land which his tyranny had done so much to devastate. To the regulations which he framed he gave the name of *uslūb*, or ‘methods,’ and by their means, says Baranī, with probably unconscious irony, agriculture would have been so improved and extended that plenty would have reigned throughout the earth, and so much money would have poured into the treasury that the king would have been able to raise an army capable of conquering the world—had they been practicable.