82 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA 
furnishes some details which are wanting in the parallel 
passages in the Ain; and reference will be made further on 
to a case in which the former seems deliberately to supply 
the text of official documents which had been omitted from 
the latter. We must then read the two together as com- 
plementary; neither tells us all we want to know, but 
nearly all is contained in one or other; and in the case of 
some gaps, at least, we may suspect that the editing was at 
fault. In the description which follows, I begin with the 
history of the heart of the Empire, from the Punjab to 
Allahabad, tracing first the assessments, then the Assign- 
ments, and then the course of certain scandals which 
supervened: I then examine the working of the Regulation- 
system in its final form; and conclude with a survey of the 
arrangements in force throughout the Empire in the latter 
portion of the reign. 
2. THE METHODS OF ASSESSMENT 
This section relates mainly to the country which, from 
the 24th regnal years onwards, was included in the five 
provinces of Lahore, Delhi, Agra, Awadh,! and Allahabad. 
A sixth province, Multan, comes into the story in the 15th 
year, and a seventh, Malwa, also appears in the records 
but the figures relating to it are so eccentric as to suggest 
that in practice it must have had an assessment system 
of its own. Put very briefly, the story which has to be told 
is one of three sets of assessment-rates, which may be called 
respectively ‘‘Sher Shah’s,” ‘the ganiingo,” and “the 
ten-year”; all three come under the general type which I 
have described as Measurement, that is to say, a charge, 
varying with the crop, on the area sown; and the transition 
from one set of rates to another represents a gradual ap- 
proximation to a workable system. 
As has been indicated in the last chapter, Akbar, or 
rather, the Regent, Bairam Khan, began by adopting for 
general use a schedule of assessment-rates which had been 
framed by Sher Shah? on the basis ot claiming for the State 
17 retain the spelling Awadh as a tacit reminder that Akbar’s province 
differed materially in extent from the country now known as Oudh. 
2 Ain, i. 297, 347. The passages bearing on this section are discussed 
a. Appendix E.