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Akbar's Land Revenue Arrangements in Bengal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

W. H. Moreland
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Extract

The nature of Akbar's arrangements for the assessment of the land revenue in the newly acquired province of Bengal is a matter of some historical importance. It concerns the eighteenth century as well as the sixteenth, for the controversies which marked the early years of British rule found common ground in the revenue roll attributed to the year 1582; and, now that the famous Fifth Report of the Select Committee of 1812 is being studied so widely in India, it is desirable to know just what Todar Mal did, and just where Grant and Shore took erroneous views regarding the nature of his action.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , January 1926 , pp. 43 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1926

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References

page 43 note 1 JRAS., January, 1918.

page 44 note 1 Jarrett's version is ii, 121, of the ASB. translation ; Gladwin's, p. 303 of the Calcutta reprint, edited by J. Mukhopadhyaya.

page 44 note 2 A few detailed notes appear to be required:— 1. 1. I take mālguẕār in the regular sense as “ revenue-paying”. I have found no contemporary authority for the technical use as synonym of zamīndār, which now prevails in some parts of India.

1. 2. The India Office MS. 265 has ālī (rice) for sāle. I prefer the latter reading; all the other MSS. I have consulted agree with the text, while in British Museum Addl. 6546, the copyist has first written shālī and then corrected it by erasing the dots over the s. Rice was the subject of the preceding paragraph, and the error might easily occur : if we adopt the reading shālī, it becomes necessary to make conjectural alterations in the text in order to get sense.

1. 3. “ And ” is not in the text, but appears in BM. Or. 1679, and Addl. 7652.

1. 6. The verb bāz-guftan, which is used here, may apparently carry the general sense of either “ repeat ” or “ reply ”. The former sense gives the idea of “ insisting ”, the latter of “ objecting ”. All the MSS. consulted have az for dar ; the latter preposition is awkward in any case, while the former is more appropriate to the sense of “ objecting ”. The word “ it ” points, as the text stands, to measurement of cheapness, but the reference must be to land, not prices.

There are also some various readings in the tenses, such as bi-rasānand for rasānand in 1. 3, and būd for bāshad in 1. 4, but no MS. that I have seen is consistent in the matter of tense.

page 45 note 1 Fifth Report, 428. The references to this Report give the original pages, which are shown in Archdeacon Firminger's annotated edition (Calcutta, 1917).

page 45 note 2 See his Preface in vol. i, of the ASB. translation, and his conclusion in vol. iii, 400 ff.

page 46 note 1 Ain, translation, i, 258 ff.

page 47 note 1 The chief difficulty in assessing by paimāish arose from the large fluctuations in local prices which were inevitable in the circumstances of the period ; the topic is therefore strictly relevant, though its abrupt. introduction may surprise the modern reader.

page 48 note 1 Abul Fazl's preface, p. x, in vol. i of ASB. translation.

page 50 note 1 JRAS., January, 1922, p. 28.

page 50 note 2 I believe this to be the meaning of the figures called kāmil which come into prominence in the course of the seventeenth century, but I have not yet traced a contemporary explanation of the term.

page 50 note 3 Rogers, and Beveridge, , Memoirs of Jahangir, i, 22.Google Scholar

page 51 note 1 Fifth Report, 255 ff. ; Ascoli, Early Revenue History of Bengal, 25.

page 51 note 2 From Akbar to Aurangzeb, 178 ff. Grant had an inkling of this change, but attributed it to the influence of the American mines (Fifth Report, 259).

page 52 note 1 Firminger (op. cit.), ii, 737 ff.

page 53 note 1 Fifth Report, 250.

page 53 note 2 e.g. Fifth Report, 250, 254, 265.

page 53 note 3 Printed as Appendix 13 to Fifth Report, 619 ff.

page 54 note 1 For Murshid Kuli Khan's work, see Sarkar, J. N., History of Aurangzeb, i, 191 ff.Google Scholar

page 54 note 2 Fifth Report, 184.

page 55 note 1 Memoir of the Life and Correspondence of John Lord Teignmouth (London, 1843), i, 169Google Scholar; quoted on p. xxix of Firminger's introduction to vol. i.

page 55 note 2 Blochmann's note on this passage shows that, with one exception, all the authorities used by him might be read as rub‘. The precise significance of reia, or ray‘;, as the word is now written, is a question of some interest, but it is immaterial for the present purpose.

page 55 note 3 Fifth Report, 638.