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Mughal Administration c18: Chapter XIV. Sources of Information

Mughal Administration c18

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Chapter XIV. Sources of Information

§ 1. Ain-i-Akbari, criticised.

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The best known source of information about Mughal administration is Abul Fazl's *Ain-i-Akbari*. But this work, though it was the progenitor and in certain respects the model, of later official handbooks, has many defects. It was the first work of its kind in India and was written when the newly created Mughal administration was in a half fluid condition. Abul Fazl, therefore, tells us what an officer ought to aim at doing, rather than what the experienced servants of a long-settled Government were in the habit of doing; that is to say, he draws an ideal picture instead of giving us a faithful description of the administration in its actual working. Moreover, he is an insufferable rhetorician, and even when he intends to tell a fact, he buries it under a mass of figures of speech and round-about expressions. His work, therefore, does not give us much real help in drawing a correct and detailed picture of the administrative machinery, though in the statistical portion he is detailed and correct. We are oppressed by a sense of the vagueness and unreality of the picture as we go through the descriptive parts of the *Ain*.

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As Mr. W. Crooke writes,—"No one who reads the *Ain-i-Akbari*, the cyclopædic annals of his rule, can fail to be conscious of a certain lack of departmental perspective. Akbar was a master of detail: but here detail is pushed to the extreme. We find careful accounts of the organisation of the camp and household, the stable and wardrobe, the armoury and the hunting establishment.........On the other hand, we learn little of the essentials of administration as we understand it—about the police and judicial services, the development of the national resources, the relief of famine, education and medical aid." (N. W. P. 101-102.) "What trust is to be placed in the figures of the *Ain-i-Akbari* it is difficult to say. . . In respect to the revenue recorded in the *Ain-i-Akbari* it may be questioned whether it was not an ideal assessment, and whether it was ever collected for the State." (J. R. Reid.)

§ 2. Dastur-ul-amls and their contents.

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The immense size of the *Ain-i-Akbari* and the unreality or rather the practical uselessness of much of its contents, made it undesirable to write similar works or to bring it up to date in the reigns of Akbar's successors. The needs of their officials were met by compiling a class of handbooks called *Dastur-ul-aml*, written in the exact antithesis of the style of Abul Fazl. These are highly condensed abstracts, full of facts, figures and lists, with no descriptive matter and hardly any complete sentence. Such small handbooks could be easily revised and brought up to date in successive reigns. But the revision took the form of making additions at the end of each section for bringing the work up to date.

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Such *Dastur-ul-amls* were composed in the reigns of Shah Jahan and Aurangzib, and several MSS. of them are known to exist. Thomas* used five of these works. I used one of these five, (namely, D. 163 of the Asiatic Society of Bengal) along with other sources in writing my *India of Aurangzib: statistics, topography and roads* (1901.)

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But a better *Dastur-ul-aml* has since then been copied and studied by me. One MS. of it is the India Office Library (London) Pers. No. 370, which is defective at both ends, and the other is the British Museum Oriental No. 1641, complete but entitled *Zawabit-i-Alamgiri* or the Regulations of the Emperor Aurangzib. The two MSS. are copies of the same work, in spite of the difference in their titles and the fact that they were transcribed from different manuscripts. They give figures up to the 33rd year of the Emperor's reign, *i.e.*, 1690 A.D., when the Mughal empire had reached its climax after the capture of Bijapur, Golkonda and Raigarh (the Maratha capital) and the annexation of these three kingdoms to the territory of Delhi. Mere statistics of a later date, down to about the middle of the 18th century, can be found in the works of Jag-jivan Das and Rai Chatar-mal, the latter of which I have given in English in my *India of Aurangzib*.

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These *Dastur-ul-amls* or official handbooks tell us, in the fewest words possible, about the revenues of the different provinces, the number of their subdivisions, the distances between different cities of the empire, the rules for sending official papers to Court, the records that should come to the different diwans’ offices, the total expenditure of the State, the number of mansabdars and other military forces, the usual titles of Muslim and Hindu nobles, musicians and caligraphists, the distribution of work among the bakhshis and diwans, the functions and official procedure of the *Khan-i-saman*, *Buyutat*, *Mir Atish*, *Mushrifs* of the *barqandazes* and other special classes of troops, as well as of the bakhshi of the *Ahadis*, details of the High Diwan’s office-work and the papers to be received, replied to, prepared or signed or submitted to the Emperor by him, minute rules about the cash salaries of the princes and mansabdars, the rules of branding and shoeing cavalry horses, the classification of officers according to their equipment, rules about leave and overstaying leave, and minute regulations about adjusting the jagir to an officer’s rank, payment of retainers, grant for the fodder of the transport cattle of the different grades of mansabdars.

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∗ Revenue Resources of the Mughal Empire, p. 14 and footnote, p. 33 and footnote, esp. 40 *n*.,—I.O. L. 1387, Br Mus. Addl. 6598 and 6599, A.S.B. MS. (D. 163), and another MS. copied for Elliot.

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Then we have tables of weights (as current in different places), the exchange value of the coins of different countries outside India, a list of the forts in the empire, the number of the mansabdars grade by grade, rules about promotion, dismissal and sick-leave—in short all kinds of salary-rules; the special salaries of European gunners sappers and cannon-founders (*Z.* 60*b*—62*b*), powder-supply to musketeers (*Z.* 63*a*), classification of arms, rates of *jaziya*, list of seasons appropriate for voyages (*Z.* 67*a*—68*a*), the revenue of Persia, the escheated properties of various princes, princesses and nobles, lists of presents received from Persia, the amounts in the imperial treasure-rooms (Z. 132b), lists of karkhanahs (Z. 132b—133a), lists of the abwabs abolished by Aurangzib and of the practices declared by him as illegal (Z. 135a—137a), details about Aurangzib’s armaments at the sieges of Bijapur, Golkonda, etc., with descriptions of some of the Deccan forts of his time,—and many more details about the Emperor’s Deccan campaigns and statistics about his Deccan provinces.

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It will be seen from the above what a vast mass of useful and absolutely new information is compressed into this Dastur-ul-aml. Unfortunately both the MSS. are very badly written.

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Hapily, in some respects we can correct and supplement the Dastur from a later work, which is unique of its kind in Indo-Persian literature. I mean the Mirat-i--Ahmadi or History of Gujrat by Ali Muhammad Khan, the last imperial diwan of the province, completed in 1761. The author has given full copies of as many of the imperial farmans addressed to the officials of this province as were preserved in his office. In this respect the book is a veritable mine of accurate information based upon authentic State papers. A comparison with the versions of a few of these farmans given in other works proves the honesty and industry of Ali Muhammad Khan. The printed Baroda edition of this history has been cited in my third edition.

§ 3. Manual of Officers' Duties.

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A valuable source of information on Mughal administration is a curious Persian manuscript, written not later than the early 18th century, which I secured from an old Kayastha family of the Patna district. It is a small book, 148 pages of 11 lines and sometimes 12 or 13 lines each, with the first and sixth leaves and one or two leaves at the end missing. I shall call it the *Manual of Officers' Duties*.

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We know that Egypt under Arab rule produced a number of works written by officials which are of the highest value to a student of administration. "Musabbihi gives a wealth of official documents...... The very minute descriptions of etiquette at the Fatimid Court in Ibn Tuwair seem to be copied from a book of Court ceremonial. Ibn Mammati gives from personal knowledge rules for the diwans, and later al-'Omari a chancery-manual, the most perfect work on the latter's model being Kalkashandi's...... Finally writers like Ibn Dukmak and Ibn Dji'an use or reproduce bodily records of official surveys."—[*Encyclopædia of Islam*, ii. 22.]

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My last-named MS. gives minute directions as to how the different officials of the Mughal Government should conduct themselves, what functions they were expected to discharge, what precautions they should take, and what records they should draw up or keep in duplicate. It is in the form of a dialogue. Each section begins with the statement that an aspirant for some office (let us call it *faujdari*) asks an expert in the work, "How should I act in order to satisfy my master, please the people, and secure a good name and prosperity for myself?" He receives a reply giving a long list of the special virtues that the newly appointed functionary must practise, the exact nature of his office-work, his temptations and dangers. A part of the reply is, no doubt, abstract or general good counsel, but much of it is based on actual experience and the long observed practice of the Mughal administrators. Here we get an inside view of that administration which mere theoretical treatises cannot give us.

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Contents of the *Manual of Officers' Duties* :— Praise of God [2 pages, missing]—list of contents divided into five *babs*, subdivided into 49 *fasals* in all,—I. description of the Perfect Man (*insan-i-kamil*), darvishes, sultan [2 pages missing], wakil and wazir, khan-i-saman, bakhshi, darogha of ghusal-khanah and diwan-khanah, subahdar, faujdar, darogha of artillery, mingbashi (captain of musketeers), II. sadr, qazi, mufti, muhtasib and regulator of market-prices, news-writers, peshkar of bakhshi, choice of servants, amin and krori, kotwal, mir-i-imarat (building superintendent), mushrif, III. eleven classes of daroghas of kachari &c. IV. companion (*musahib*), how masters should treat their servants and parents their children, manners in dealing with others, attending Court &c., regulation of style of living and expenditure, dress, V. travel, jamadar, nazir, clerks in offices, mustaufi, qanungo, zamindar, spectators at shows, [the last item entirely missing in ms.]

§ 4. Other sources.

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The long Court annals of the Mughal Emperors beginning with the *Akbarnamah* of the 16th century and ending with the *Bahadur Shah-namah* of 1709, are strewn with information on changes and innovations in the administrative rules or procedure.

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Certain other MSS. (such as the *Nigarnamah-i-Munshi* and the *Insha-i-Harkarn*) give blank forms of the letters-patent for appointing officers to their posts, which explain the nature of their work.

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Father Monserrate’s account of the government and Court of Akbar (Eng. tr., pp. 203-212, justice pp. 209-211), and De Laet’s very brief reference to the Court (Eng. tr., pp. 93-99) are too meagre and shallow. Manucci in his *Storia do Mogor*, ii, 329-390, 415-421, and 449-452, gives a description of the Mughal administration Court and society, which, though short and often superficial, is valuable for its criticism and personal observations. In the Court news-letters of Aurangzib’s and his successors’ reigns, called *Akhbarat-i-darbar-i-muala*, we have occasional mention of changes in administrative rules and many illustrations of the actual effect of the system. The Marathi documents (mostly legal decisions and orders in favour of individuals, title-deeds &c) printed by Rajwade in many volumes, are another mass of illustrations, mostly later than the 17th century.

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The *Kitab-ul-Kharaj* of Abu Yusuf ibn Yaqub hief qazi of Baghdad under Harun al Rashid lays down the root principles of Islamic institutions and practices (orthodox Hanafi school.)

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the *Haskalah* (Enlightenment) movement, which had begun in Germany with Moses Mendelssohn, was now making its influence felt in the Russian Empire. The *Maskilim* (adherents of the Enlightenment) sought to modernize Jewish education, encourage the study of secular subjects, and promote the use of the Russian language alongside Hebrew and Yiddish. They believed that by integrating into the broader society, Jews could improve their economic and social standing. However, this movement faced significant opposition from the traditionalist *Hasidim* and *Mitnagdim*, who feared that secular education would lead to assimilation and the abandonment of Jewish religious practices.

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The Russian government, under Tsar Nicholas I, adopted a contradictory policy towards the Jews. On one hand, it sought to "civilize" them through compulsory secular education and military service; on the other, it imposed harsh restrictions on their movement and economic activities. The infamous "cantonist" system, which conscripted Jewish boys into the army for long periods, was particularly devastating, as it often led to forced conversion to Christianity. Despite these pressures, the Jewish community maintained its internal cohesion through its religious institutions and communal organizations.

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The mid-19th century also witnessed the rise of early Zionist sentiments, as some Jewish intellectuals began to question the viability of long-term survival in the Diaspora. The pogroms that followed the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 served as a catalyst for this shift in consciousness, leading to the *Hibbat Zion* (Love of Zion) movement and the first waves of *Aliyah* (immigration) to Palestine. This period marked a turning point in Jewish history, as the community grappled with the challenges of modernity, persecution, and the search for a new national identity.

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the Lacedaemonians, who had been waiting for the signal, now attacked the city. The Athenians, though taken by surprise, were able to repel the assault, and the Lacedaemonians, finding that they could not take the city by storm, withdrew.

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This was the first time that the Lacedaemonians had attacked the city of Athens, and it was a significant event in the war. It showed that the Lacedaemonians were willing to take risks and that they were not afraid to attack the heart of the Athenian empire. It also showed that the Athenians were prepared to defend their city, even when they were taken by surprise.

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The war continued for many years, with both sides suffering heavy losses. The Athenians were able to maintain their naval supremacy, but the Lacedaemonians were able to dominate the land. The war was finally brought to an end by the peace of Nicias, which was signed in 421 BC.

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The peace of Nicias was not a lasting peace, and the war soon broke out again. This time, the Lacedaemonians were more successful, and they were able to defeat the Athenians in a series of battles. The war finally ended in 404 BC, with the defeat of the Athenians and the surrender of their city.

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The defeat of the Athenians was a major turning point in the history of Greece. It marked the end of the Athenian empire and the beginning of the Lacedaemonian hegemony. It also had a profound impact on the culture and society of Greece, as it led to a period of instability and decline.

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For B. KING, BOOK BINDERS

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Proprietor