Mughal Administration c18.s3: § 3. Manual of Officers' Duties.
Mughal Administration c18.s3
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§ 3. Manual of Officers' Duties.
c18.s3.1
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*.
c18.s3.2
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.]
c18.s3.3
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.
c18.s3.4
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.]