Mughal Administration c18.s3.3

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.