The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c20.447

v3.c20.447

The second regulation encouraged Mughuls to settle in India. These fierce nomads might furnish a mobile and efficient army, but they could not replace the industrious peasantry whose labours had filled the coffers of the state and who had been, in many tracts, dispersed and destroyed by famine and oppression. The Mughuls were attracted to India by enormous gifts, and by favours of every description, so that at the beginning of every winter numbers of commanders of tens of thousands and of thousands arrived with their wives, their families, and their followers, received great sums of money, horses, and jewels, and were entertained at princely banquets. This expenditure on an unproductive class maintained at great cost necessitated further schemes for the improvement and development of the resources of the state, and the third regulation was framed to this end. Of the details of the scheme nothing is recorded, nor is it easy to divine what sources of revenue the king could have tapped other than those which he had already exploited to the utmost, but as the regulation is said to have been enforced by clemency mingled with severity it perhaps provided for the levy of forced loans and benevolences, which led naturally to the framing of the fourth regulation, enhancing the severity of the penal code. The frequency and cruelty of the punishments inflicted by the king bred seditions and rebellion which still further inflamed his wrath and increased his severity, and even suspects were seized and cruelly tortured until in their agony they confessed to imaginary crimes and were executed on their confessions.