History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v1.c12.72

v1.c12.72

chain of officers. Everywhere wise *amins* and honest surveyors were deputed to measure the land, to prepare the record of well marked out holdings (*raqba*), and to distinguish arable land from rocky soils and water-courses. Where a village had lost its headman (*muqaddam*), he took care to appoint a new headman from the persons whose character gave the best promise of their readiness to promote cultivation and take sympathetic care of the peasantry. The poorer *ryots* were granted loans (*taqavvi*) from the public treasury, for the purchase of cattle, seeds and other needful materials of agriculture, and the advance was recovered at harvest by instalments. In one year he granted loans of forty to fifty thousand rupees to the *ryots* of Khandesh and Berar for making embankments to impound water for irrigating low-lying lands.