250 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA 
which was his best authority. The MSS. I have seen fall into 
two groups. One group runs the two parts of the clause into 
one, reading “wa har sal jins-i kamil afziin bid’ (RAS. 116, 
and 1.0. 266, 267, 268, 270). [Jins-i kamil bears the precise 
meaning of high-grade crops, such as sugarcane or poppy, 
which were encouraged by the Revenue Ministry on fiscal 
grounds, as yielding a larger Demand per bigha: this reading 
then asserts as a fact that cropping steadily improved. The 
assertion would not be absolutely irrelevant, because it would 
record the success of the new arrangements, but it is awkwardly 
placed, and does not fit in with the concluding words, because 
there is in fact no table showing such an increase. My reason 
for rejecting this reading is that, if it were the original, I do not 
see how the other readings could have arisen from it by gloss 
or error. On the other hand, a copyist, confronted with some 
of the alternative readings, might in despair pick out enough 
to make an intelligible sentence, omitting the apparently surplus 
words; or possibly the original MS. may have been altered in 
editing at this point, and the alterations were obscure. 
In the remaining MSS. the texts agree generally except for 
the second and third words, and for a few casual variations, 
which can be neglected. The second and third words stand 
as follows: — 
har sal printed text. 
har mil 1.0. 264, Add. 6546, 7652. 
partal 1.0. 265. 
har sal bar mal Add. 5645. 
tar mal Add. 5609. 
har hal Cambridge. 
niz mal Or. 2169. Add. 6552. 
Such diversity is very unusual, and I can account for it only 
on the view that the original contained some highly technical 
phrase, which was unintelligible to copyists outside the Ministry, 
that it was distorted almost from the outset, and that various 
attempts were then made to obtain sense. Or. 2169 is much the 
earliest of the dated MSS., and Add. 6552 is also early, “ probably 
17th century’; their reading gives a technical sense, 
much better than anything which can be read into any of the 
remainder; while it is easy to see how distortion can have come, 
if the cryptic phrase mal-i jins-i kamil were either badly written 
or misunderstood. I therefore adopt this reading.