History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c85.s6.3

v5.c85.s6.3

But, at the same time, their income, inadequate even on paper for their heavy duties, was actually dwindling very fast. The general unrest naturally caused a falling off in the rent collection from the peasants. Then, the frequent changes of officers and transfers of their jagirs prevented them from gaining knowledge of the tenantry, establishing relations with them, and spreading the inevitable arrears of a lean year gently over a number of fat years. It is difficult to imagine a system more ruinous to the peasants and therefore in the long run more harmful to the State also, than the actual administration of Mughal jagirs. It ended in a mad looting of the peasants by rival jagirdars' agents or successive agents of the same jagirdar. The former I have described a few pages back. As for the latter, Bhimsen gives a lurid picture of it: "There is no hope of a jagir being left with the same officer next year. When a jagirdar sends a collector to his jagir, he first takes an advance from the latter by way of loan. This collector, on arriving in the village, fearing lest a second man who had given a larger loan to the jagirdar was following (to supplant him), does not hesitate to collect the rent with every oppression.... The ryots have given up cultivation; the jagirdars do not get a penny." [Dil. ii. 139a-140a.] The same ruinous policy was followed in revenue-collection in the Crownlands, as we learn from the despatches of the subahdar of Orissa. [Studies in Mughal India, 223.]