Mughal Administration c17.s1.2

c17.s1.2

All the twenty Indian *subahs* of the Mughal empire were governed by means of exactly the same administrative machinery with exactly the same procedure and official titles. Persian was the one language used in all office records, farmans, sanads, land-grants, passes, despatches and receipts. The same monetary standard prevailed throughout the empire, with coins having the same names, the same purity and the same denominations, and differing only in the name of the mint-town. Officials and soldiers were frequently transferred from one province to another. Thus, the native of one province felt himself almost at home in another province ; traders and travellers passed most easily from city to city, *subah* to *subah*, and all realized the imperial oneness of this vast country. Nationality, however, could not result from this political union, because the people had no civil liberty, no share in the government of their country. They were not citizens but merely equal subjects of one empire.