THE 13tH AND 1l4tH CENTURIES 39 
Governor of Dipalpur selected as a bride for his brother the 
daughter of a Hindu Chief living within his jurisdiction. 
The Chief rejected the proposal in terms which were re- 
garded as insulting, and the Governor thereupon led his 
troops to the spot, and proceeded to collect the year’s 
revenue by force directly from the headmen, who would 
ordinarily have paid it to the Chief. The suffering caused 
by these measures induced the lady to sacrifice herself for 
her tribe, the marriage duly took place, and King Firiiz 
was its offspring. The point of the story lies in the chroni- 
cler’'s remark that the people were helpless, for “in those 
days Alauddin was on the throne,” and no protest was 
possible; and it may fairly be inferred that a strong Governor, 
serving under a strong King, could treat the Chiefs very 
much as he chose. 
Alauddin was, as a rule, opposed to the alienation of 
revenue by way of Grant or Assignment. As we have seen, 
he resumed all existing Grants early in his reign, and he 
appears to have made few if any, in later years. His Court, 
indeed, was brilliant, but rewards to scholars and artists 
were on a moderate scale, and apparently they were usually 
given in cash! As to Assignments, he probably disliked 
the whole system, for the later chronicler, Shams Afif, records 
(p. 95) that he condemned assignments of villages on the 
ground that they constituted a political danger, the assignees 
forming local ties, which might easily develop into an 
opposition party. He certainly did not give small Assign- 
ments to individual troopers, his large army at the capital 
being paid entirely in cash; and there is, so far as I can find, 
no record of his giving large Assignments to officers. It is 
quite possible that some Assignments were given or con- 
tinued, because the silence of the chronicles is not conclusive 
on such questions, but it is clear that the practice had, for 
the time being, fallen out of favour. Of Farming, I have 
found no trace during this reign. Here, too, it is possible 
that our information is incomplete ; but, speaking generally, 
{ Barni, 341, 365-6. He contrasts Aliuddin’s conduct ‘with that of 
Mahmid of Ghazni. The latter, he says, would have given a country 
or a province to a poet like Amir Khusri, while the former merely offered 
him a salarv of 1000 tankas