84 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA 
From the 6th to the gth year, a single set of commutation- 
rates was adopted for all five provinces, with only a few 
local variations. In the 6th and 7th years, for instance, 
wheat was everywhere charged go dams; and, since we must 
allow for local variations in season and in productivity 
as large as at the present day, and for very much narrower 
markets owing to the higher cost of moving bulky produce, 
it is impossible to believe that uniform prices can actually 
have prevailed, alike in town and in country, all the way 
from Lahore to Allahabad. The only reasonable inference 
is that the uniform grain-Demand fixed by the schedule in 
force was commuted by a single price-list, probably based 
on the rates prevailing.in the Imperial Camp. 
This inference is supported by the fact that in these years 
the pulses were very heavily over-assessed relatively to 
cereals. As has been explained in the last chapter, un- 
certainty regarding the units employed prevents us from 
drawing conclusions regarding actual productivity fromthe 
data contained in Sher Shah’s schedule; but relative, as 
distinct from actual, productivity can be stated with some 
approach to precision. Taking the relative productivity 
from this schedule, and the relative normal prices! from 
another section of the Ain, we find that, if the assessable 
value of wheat, stated in moneys, is put as 100, the correspond- 
ing figures for jowar (sorghum) ought to be 66, and for gram, 
53. In the 6th year, the assessment on jowar works out 
to 55, so that, relatively to wheat, it was slightly under- 
charged; but the figure for gram was 89 instead of 53, and 
another pulse (moth) was overcharged on the same scale. 
The obvious explanation of this anomalv is that pulses 
1 The prices considered to be reasonable in Akbar’s reign are given in 
Ain, i. 60 ff. In J.R.A.S., 1918, p. 375 fi., I showed that the relation between 
these prices was very much the same as existed in the years 1910-12, and 
a similar relation holds in all the other figures I have tested. Prices of 
wheat and gram, for instance, have varied enormously in the course of 
six centuries, but the value of a pound of wheat in terms of a pound of 
gram has been one of the most stable relations in history. It may be 
well to add that this relation is obscured in some modern works, where the 
wrong figure has been taken for gram. Two kinds of gram are referred 
to occasionally in the chronicles, * Kabuli,”” which was an exotic, and cost 
more than wheat, and ‘* black,” the common kind, which cost less. Edward 
Thomas, in The Chronicles of the Pathan Kings of Delhi, p. 429, showed the 
price of gram (nukhid) under Akbar as 164 dams; this represents the price 
of the exotic. country gram being priced at 8 dams.