The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c4.5

c4.5

*Pay always in Arrears.* — In later times pay due from the imperial treasury to the *manṣabdārs*, as well as that due from the *manṣabdārs* to the private soldiers, was always in arrears. In fact, we should not go far wrong, I think, if we asserted that this was the case in the very best times. The reasons are obvious. More men were entertained than could be easily paid; Indian Mahomedans are very bad financiers; the habit of the East is to stave off payment by any expedient. To owe money to somebody seems in that country the normal condition of mankind. For example, even such a careful manager as Niẓām-ul-Mulk, in his alleged testament, dated the 4th Jamādī II, 1161 H. (31st May, 1748), is credited with the boast that he “never withheld pay for more than three months” (*“Asiatick Miscellany,”* Calcutta, 1788, vol. iii, 160). Another reason for keeping the men in arrears may have been the feeling that they were thereby prevented from transferring their services to some other chief quite as readily as they might have done if there were nothing owing. Disturbances raised by troops clamouring for their pay were among the unfailing sequels to the disgrace or sudden death of a commander. The instances are too numerous to specify. On this head Haji Mustapha, *Seir*, iii, 35, note 29, says truly enough: — "The troops are wretchedly paid, twenty or thirty months of arrears being no rarity. The ministers, princes, and grandees always keep twice or thrice as many men as they have occasion for, and fancy that by withholding the pay they concern the men in the preservation of their lord's life." We can also quote Lord Clive as to the state of things in the Bengal *ṣūbah* in 1757 ("Minutes of Select Committee of 1772," reprint, 52) — "There were great arrears due to the army by Sirāj-ud-Daulah as well as by Mīr Ja‘far, and the sums amounted to three or four millions sterling. It is the custom of the country never to pay the army a fourth part of what they promise them; and it is only in times of distress that the army can get paid at all, and that is the reason why their troops always behave so" (badly?).