42 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA 
essentials the position they had held in the thirteenth 
century, but—where the Governor was sufficiently strong— 
with less freedom in regard to their treatment of their 
peasants. 
A third element in the policy of Ghiyisuddin was his 
insistence on the dignity of provincial Governors, and on a 
correspondingly high standard of conduct on their part. 
[t is clear that, at his accession, speculative farming of the 
revenue was common; and the Ministry was crowded with 
touts and pests of various kinds, whose functions have to be 
guessed from the designations applied to them,—“spies,” 
“farmers,” ‘“enhancement-mongers,”” and “wreckers.” The 
King put a stop to the activities of these pests, and chose 
his Governors from the nobility; he ordered that they were 
to receive all due consideration from the audit-staff of the 
Ministry; but he made it clear that their position and 
dignity would depend on their own conduct. They might 
honourably take the ordinary perquisites of the post, 
described as “a half-tenth or half-eleventh, and the one- 
tenth or one-fifteenth of the revenue’; while their sub- 
ordinates were allowed to appropriate “a half or one per 
cent.” in addition to their salaries; but exactions were to 
be limited to these figures, which we may assume were 
already traditional! and any substantial misappropriations 
were to be sternly punished. 
These orders call for a few words of explanation regarding 
the relations which subsisted between the provincial execu- 
tive and the audit staff of the Revenue Ministry. The 
audit was periodical, not continuous. An official was left 
at work for some time, and then called to the Ministry for 
the two-fold process denoted audit (muhdsaba) and recovery 
»mutdlaba); the auditors, as might be expected, strove to 
bring out a balance due, and payment of this balance was 
enforced by torture. The first mention I have found of 
recovery by torture is in the proceedings of Sharaf Qai, 
which have been referred to under the reign of Alauddin 
(Barni, 288). There is no suggestion in that passage that 
officers of the rank of Governor were tortured, but the orders 
! Ibn Batiita, who was in India during the next reign, raentions (iii. 112] 
that Governors received a half-tenth on the revenue as a regular thing,