184 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA 
which, so far as it is possible to judge, appears to have been 
conceived and executed on statesmanlike lines. 
The work was entrusted to an officer named Murshid 
Quli Khan! who was appointed Diwan, first in the two 
southern provinces, and then for the whole region. He 
was a foreigner, a native of Khorasan, who came to India 
in the service of Ali Mardan Khan, and enjoyed a share of 
the lavish patronage which fell to the followers of that officer 
after he transferred his allegiance from Persia to India. 
Murshid Quli’s first recorded appointment was that of 
Faujdar in the Punjab hills; then he became Master of the 
Stables, and then Bakhshi of Lahore, from which post he 
was sent to the Deccan as Diwan. He had thus, so far as 
the chronicles show, no previous experience of revenue work 
in India. 
The immediate need of the country was to collect peasants 
with adequate resources, and in this matter the practice of 
the North was followed, in that reliance was placed mainly 
on the village headmen. The headmen, we are told, were 
encouraged and rewarded, advances in cash were given to 
them, and competent men were chosen for those villages 
where the headmen had disappeared. At the same time 
the possibilities of restoration were ascertained by an 
extensive survey, in which the culturable lands were dis- 
tinguished from the unproductive areas. This, too, was 
in accordance with northern practice, if we may accept 
Badifini’s account that Akbar’s collectors began by ex- 
amining the whole country, and selecting the areas capable 
of cultivation. The novelty of Murshid Quli Khan's work 
lay in the methods of assessment. 
The account which we are following states that up to 
this time neither Measurement nor Sharing had been 
t For Murshid Quli Khan's work, see Maasirulumra, III, 493 ff., and 
Khwafi, i. 714, 731 ff The text of Khwafi is fluid, and the passages on 
pp. 714, 731 are contradictory in details, and so condensed as to be barely 
intelligible by themselves; but the full account given from a single MS., 
p. 732m, is clear and precise. It agrees closely with that in the Maasiru- 
lumra, so closely that probably either one was copied from the other with 
verbal changes, or the two were taken from a common source; in either 
case they must be regarded as constituting a single authority. This 
Murshid Quli must of course be distinguished from the officer of the same 
name, who was so prominent a figure in Bengal half a centurv later, and 
who is better known bv his title of Jafar Khan.