Bibliothek des Instituts 
fiir Weltwirtschiaft Kiel 
THE REIGN OF AKBAR (1556-1605) 113 
cultivation should be carried on in the records from year to 
year, instead of measuring them every season; while the 
newly-broken land should be assessed summarily in block, 
and not measured in detail. This proposal was sanctioned, 
but presumably experience showed that greater elasticity 
was required to meet the divergent views of different bodies 
of peasants, and the later rules give an option where Todar 
Mal’s proposal gave none. It will be remembered that Sher 
Shah, in his early years, had found that, even in two 
parganas, the peasants were not unanimous as to the method 
of assessment to be preferred; and in the much wider area 
over which Akbar’s rules applied the recognition of diversity 
was obviously reasonable. 
Some additional light is thrown on the policy of develop- 
ment by the chapters in the Ain! dealing with the assessment 
of land which had fallen out of cultivation, and then been 
broken up afresh. Three scales of assessment were recog- 
nised, to be applied according to circumstances. In the 
first of these, the assessment began at two-fifths of the 
ordinary rates, and rose to the full amount in the fifth year. 
In the second, and more favourable, scale, a very low charge 
in grain was made for the first year, rising by degrees until 
the full Demand was taken in the fifth; while under the 
third scale, applicable to land which had been uncultivated 
for five years or more, the initial charge was nominal, 
rising to one-sixth, one-fourth, and finally one-third of the 
produce. A collector was thus in a position tc contribute 
materially to the recovery of villages which had been 
impoverished by calamities. 
From development, the rules pass to details of the pro- 
cedure in the seasonal assessment by Measurement. It is 
not clear whether or not the practice of taking the areas of 
defined fields from previous records was now in force; the 
rules speak of measuring, but the term might cover a 
shortened procedure in which an existing record of area 
was accepted or merely checked. The most important 
feature of this part of the rules is the treatment of crop- 
1 Ain, i. 301. Jarrett’s rendering, two-fifths to four-fifths of the produce 
s not supported by the text, and is impossible, because the ‘reduced’ 
charges so calculated would be more than the ordinary Demand of one. 
third.