Mughal Administration c2: Preface
Mughal Administration c2
- Language
- English
Preface
c2.1
This volume has grown out of two courses of six lectures each delivered by me as Reader in Indian History at the Patna University in January 1920 and February 1921. The first edition of the book (published in 1921) contained only the first year's lectures. The second edition (1924) was more than double the size of the first, as it contained in addition to both courses of lectures, two altogether new chapters. In the preparation of the second edition a more exhaustive study of the *Ain-i-Akbari* and the *Mirat-i-Ahmadi* was made and very important information derived from a correct manuscript of the *Mirat-i-Ahmadi* with useful marginal glosses which was traced in the O.P.L., Patna. The sections on illegal exactions, news-reporters, the judiciary etc. were, in the second edition, so fully re-written as to have become practically new. Moreover, the chapter on Aurangzib's Revenue Rules (originally published as a part of my *Studies in Mughal India*) was now added to this volume, and it will be omitted from future editions of the *Studies* as more appropriate here than there.
c2.2
The book has been minutely revised for the third edition and all the doubtful points satisfactorily cleared by a fresh study of the Persian sources. The additions amount to nearly five pages. Full use has also been made of the *Encyclopædia of Islam*, now within sight of completion, by giving references to it wherever possible, in order to show how my views find support in this standard work and also to guide the reader to all the greatest authorities on Muslim Law and institutions cited therein. This is the shortest and most effective method of answering a Calcutta pleader who has attacked my statements, because my readers will hardly consider his ignorance of the primary sources on Islam and of Mughal state papers as compensated for by the brass of avocasserie.
c2.3
As the basis of my study I have utilised the immense mass of Court bulletins (*akhbarat*) of the Mughal empire and other old official papers in Persian secured from the Jaipur State archives and the R.A.S. (and mss.), which show us the actual working of the Mughal administration (as distinct from its theory), though lack of space has prevented me from quoting them. They play the same important part with reference to Mughal administration that the papyri do in the study of early Arab rule in Egypt.
c2.4
It is hoped that in its present form this book will supply a complete treatise on the administrative system of the Mughal empire,—its theory and practice, its root principles and aims, and their effect in actual operation. Every branch of State activity (except the army) has been treated here from contemporary records. The minutiae of the revenue system have been omitted.
c2.5
December 1935.
c2.6
JADUNATH SARKAR.