Mughal Administration c18.s1: § 1. Ain-i-Akbari, criticised.
Mughal Administration c18.s1
- Language
- English
§ 1. Ain-i-Akbari, criticised.
c18.s1.1
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*.
c18.s1.2
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.)