80 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA 
change in system, and we may fairly treat the accession of 
Akbar as the opening of a new period. 
Akbar succeeded to the throne in 1556, when he was only 
14 years old; the period of his personal rule began in 1562, 
and lasted until his death in 1605. For the present purpose 
this Jong reign falls into two divisions; up to the 24th regnal 
year (1579-80) the revenue administration may be described 
as a series of experiments, while thenceforward the authori- 
ties indicate that stability of system had been attained, 
though adjustment of details was still required. Materials 
for the study of the earlier period are fuller than for any 
previous reign, and throw light on both the past and the 
future; but the texts are by no means easy to interpret, 
and the account which I give in this chapter will be found 
to differ in some important matters from those which have 
been furnished by previous writers. 
The main authorities for the period are the Akbarnima 
and its concluding section, the Ain-i Akbari, which must be 
regarded as a distinct, though not unrelated, work. These 
authorities are official, and in addition to them we have 
various unofficial chronicles, the most notable of which 
bear the names of Nizamuddin Ahmad and Badaiini. The 
unofficial records are indispensable to a correct appreciation 
of the environment, but they throw little direct light on the 
details of the agrarian system; a few passages from them 
will require our attention, but the main lines of the story 
must be drawn from the official documents. 
The Akbarnama is a formal chronicle of the reign, pre- 
pared under the Emperor's orders by Shaikh Abul Fazl, 
one of the foremost writers of the age, and a man absolutely 
devoted to his Imperial master; it is characterised by a 
strongly individual style, and, generally, by a due sense of 
proportion in regard to subject-matter; and as a piece of 
literature it must be given a high rank. To the historian, 
its chief defect is an economy, or, according to some students, 
an occasional perversion, of the truth, in matters where the 
naked facts might have been unpleasant to recall; it requires 
therefore to be read critically in the light of other accounts, 
but for our purposes this defect is not a very serious matter. 
The Ain-i Akbari, which in point of form is the