88 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA 
such cases the local authorities would have to start collec- 
tion, a process which must never be delayed, on the basis of 
their proposed rates; and then would come orders from 
Court altering the rates, which would necessarily involve 
a hurried adjustment of the Demand in the middle of the 
season, ‘to the annoyance of everybody concerned. 
The Akbarndma (iii. 282) gives substantially the same 
account in more elegant language, but it adds a point which 
the departmental record ignores, that some of the price- 
reporters “were rumoured to have strayed from the path 
of rectitude,” a suggestion which we need not hesitate to 
accept as probable. It adds also that the officials at head- 
quarters, in other words, the staff of the Revenue Ministry, 
were distressed and helpless, until a solution was found by 
Akbar himself.. We may then accept the. concurrent ac- 
counts that the invention of the final, or “Ten-year” 
schedules of rates was the Emperor's own idea, and not 
that of his officials. 
The distinctive feature of the new schedules, which are 
on record in the Ain, is that the Demand-rates on all crops 
were fixed in cash, not in grain, so that the need for seasonal 
commutation was obviated. The account of their calcula- 
tion is obscure,! but my reading of the authorities is that 
the rates adopted were the average of those which had been 
fixed for the previous ten years, the period during which the 
ganiingo-rates had been in force. In the schedules, the 
parganas are grouped into what may be described as assess- 
ment-circles, with a schedule (dasti#r)? for each circle; and 
it may fairly be said that the grouping was, on the whole, 
satisfactory, for most of the circles of which I have personal 
knowledge are fairly homogeneous from the standpoint of 
productivity. 
The view that the new rates were averaged from ten 
years’ experience cannot be checked arithmetically. For 
the qganiingo-rates. we possess only the maximum and 
! The authorities are discussed in Appendix E, 
2 1t was shown in J.R.A.S,, 1918, pp. 12, 13, that the word dastir does 
not in the Ain carry the meaning of a local area attributed to it by some 
modern writers, but was the precise official designation of a schedule of 
cash-rates, as distinct from ray‘, which denoted a schedule of grain-rates 
(T.R.A.S.. 1026, pp. 454 {I.).