The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s9.t4.11

c14.s9.t4.11

Many passages and paragraphs, nay, chapters of the *Ain-i-Akbari* cannot be taken as contributions to objective history or records of actual facts. Even in regard to the land revenue settlements and figures relating thereto as given by Abul Fazl one is not quite clear as to whether we always and everywhere have the things actually in force or come across the general scheme of financial administration such as served as the basis for executive action. These features of Abul Fazl's treatise become apparent by the side of another great Persian work, the *Seir Mutaqherin*² (View of Modern Times), the history of India after Aurangzeb composed by Gholam Hussein of Bengal in 1780. This work of the eighteenth century is more objective as history, although no doubt it is furnished with its personal equation as every historical composition is bound to be. A comparison with such formally historical treatises enables us to feel that the *Ain-i-Akbari's* place in the history of political, economic and financial literature cannot be limited to its realistic historicity alone. The work has been conceived by the author as a much more than historical treatise. It is an account in which the messages, norms, ideals etc. play as prominent a rôle as the objective book-keeping and compilation of registers.