APPENDIX E 
24% 
15th year, when the new assessment-rates also began to 
operate. The interval does not appear to be excessive when 
we remember that over a thousand qaniingos were concerned, 
with only ten supervisors—one man to a hundred or more— 
and that schedules for adjoining parganas must have required 
comparison and agreement, so that the sickness or slackness 
of one man might have delayed the work of many parganas. 
That the process was gradual is shown by the use of the past- 
continuous tense, and the probabilities are that it went on for 
a considerable time. 
My interpretation of paragraph C, taken with the other 
relevant passages, is thus that the defects recorded in paragraphs 
A and B were noticed, and reform was ordered, in the 11th 
year; that the reforms took time, and the method of assessing 
the Reserved lands was changed temporarily in the 13th 
year without waiting for their completion; but that in the 
15th year, new assessment-schedules and a new Valuation 
same into force. Our authorities were, however, interested in 
the latter rather than the former: they do not say expressly 
that new schedules were introduced, but the Ain mentions them 
in the cryptic phrase fagsimat-+ mulk, and figures given in the 
preceding chapter show that they were in fact introduced. 
At this point there is a notable omission in the Ain, which 
tells nothing of the fate of this second Valuation. The gap can 
be filled from the Akbarnama, which records (iii. 117) that 
before the rgth year the officials at headquarters used to 
increase the Valuation arbitrarily, and used to open the hand 
of corruption in decreasing and increasing, so that the Emperor’s 
officers were dissatisfied and ungrateful. To remedy the evil, 
Akbar placed most of his officers on cash-salaries, and brought 
most of the Empire under direct administration (so that for 
the time being no Valuation would be required). The reason 
for the Ain’s silence on this important change can only be guessed: 
we may assume bad drafting, or we may infer departmental 
amour propre, since it was clearly discreditable to the Ministry 
that a Valuation should have to be set aside within a few years 
of its introduction, because it had been falsified; but all we know 
is that the account is incomplete, and that here, as in some later 
years, facts are recorded in the Akbarnama which ought to have 
appeared in the Ain. 
The next clause, D, passes to the breakdown of commutation,