THE 13ta AND 1l4tH CENTURIES 43 
of Ghiyasuddin indicate that they had not been exempt, 
since he found it advisable to prohibit anything of the kind. 
The prohibition was renewed (574) by Firiiz, so it may be 
assumed that torture had been practised under Muhammad 
Tughlaq. The next chronicler, Shams Afif, also records 
(341) the friendly nature of the audit of Governors’ accounts 
under Firiiz; but elsewhere (488 ff.) he tells how a high 
officer was flogged periodically for some months in order to 
recover what he had embezzled when Deputy-Governor of 
Gujarat. We may infer then that, while torture was an 
ordinary incident in the case of officials, it might be applied 
under some kings, or in exceptional cases, even to an 
officer of the rank of Governor. The subject recurs in the 
sixteenth century, when, as we shall see in a later chapter, 
some of Akbar’s officers practised recovery ‘‘after the 
ancient fashion”; and the flogging of defaulting Governors 
is recorded in the seventeenth century in the kingdom of 
Golconda! It is necessary therefore, in trying to realise 
the position of revenue-payers, to bear in mind that a 
Governor or other official might have a very strong motive 
for oppressive conduct in cases where the choice lay between 
torturing defaulters and being tortured himself. 
Apparently the Governors appointed by Ghiyasuddin, 
while they were to be men of rank, were to hold their posts 
on farming-terms, that is to say, the surplus-revenue, to be 
remitted to the treasury, was to be a stated sum, and not 
a matter to be settled by annually balancing accounts of 
actual receipts and sanctioned expenditure. This seems 
to me to be the most reasonable interpretation of the orders 
that the Ministry should not make ‘an increase of more 
than one-tenth or one-eleventh on the provinces and 
country by surmi.c a. gu: s-werk or on the reports of 
spies and the reoresenta.on oI enhancement-mongers.” 
The Demand on the peasants was, as we have seen, to 
be assessed by Sharing, and would therefore depend on the 
seasons: the Ministry would not be in a position to vary 
the amount of revenue, except by varying the share which 
1 See Methwold’s Relations of the Kingdom of Golckonda, in Purchas His 
Pilgrimage, 4th edition, p. 996. A Governor of Masulipatam ‘for defect 
of ful payment. was beaten with canes upon the back, feet, and belly.