THE OUTLYING REGIONS 183 
guess-work. According to him, Malik Ambar abolished 
the practice of Sharing, and established “a fixed rent in 
kind,” which, later on, was replaced by “a fixed rent in 
money”; and various passages in the Report show that he 
used these terms in their natural sense, so that he could 
speak of ‘‘a permanent village settlement,” with a revenue 
independent of seasonal fluctuations. Elsewhere, however, 
he refers to grain-rates charged on the bigha, and he allows 
that the fixed money-rent existed in only 110 villages out 
of 290 in the region covered by his enquiries. He did not 
find any precise statement of the share claimed, but guessed 
it to be less than one-third. 
Malik Ambar’s final method was then either a cash 
Demand, fixed annually on the basis of cultivation, or a 
Demand fixed once for all, either in cash or in grain, and 
independent of changes in cultivation. In the present state 
of our knowledge, no decision can be made between these 
alternatives, though, in the circumstances of the time, 
the former is the more probable. The duration of his 
method, whatever it was, is also uncertain. He died about 
the year 1626, and his methods may have died with him; 
but in any case they could scarcely have survived the 
calamities of the next ten years. The Deccan was desolated 
by the great famine of 1630, and the fighting which preceded 
the final annexation of Ahmadnagar completed the dis- 
organisation of agriculture: it is quite certain that ‘‘fixed 
rents” in Robertson’s phrase could not have continued to 
be paid, and it is very doubtful if the machinery required 
for the system indicated by Grant Duff could have continued 
to function. 
All we know is that the economic and financial position 
of the Deccan as a whole remained unsatisfactory for some 
years after the Mogul annexation of Ahmadnagar. The 
administrative organisation of this region was altered more 
than once, but eventually! four Mogul provinces were con- 
stituted, all of which were sometimes placed under a single 
Viceroy. After some time, Prince Aurangzeb was appointed 
to this post; and, beginning about the year 1652, an entire 
reorganisation of the revenue-system was undertaken, 
! Badshahnama, I, ii. 205, II, 710 ff.