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.
