84 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA
From the 6th to the gth year, a single set of commutation-
rates was adopted for all five provinces, with only a few
local variations. In the 6th and 7th years, for instance,
wheat was everywhere charged go dams; and, since we must
allow for local variations in season and in productivity
as large as at the present day, and for very much narrower
markets owing to the higher cost of moving bulky produce,
it is impossible to believe that uniform prices can actually
have prevailed, alike in town and in country, all the way
from Lahore to Allahabad. The only reasonable inference
is that the uniform grain-Demand fixed by the schedule in
force was commuted by a single price-list, probably based
on the rates prevailing.in the Imperial Camp.
This inference is supported by the fact that in these years
the pulses were very heavily over-assessed relatively to
cereals. As has been explained in the last chapter, un-
certainty regarding the units employed prevents us from
drawing conclusions regarding actual productivity fromthe
data contained in Sher Shah’s schedule; but relative, as
distinct from actual, productivity can be stated with some
approach to precision. Taking the relative productivity
from this schedule, and the relative normal prices! from
another section of the Ain, we find that, if the assessable
value of wheat, stated in moneys, is put as 100, the correspond-
ing figures for jowar (sorghum) ought to be 66, and for gram,
53. In the 6th year, the assessment on jowar works out
to 55, so that, relatively to wheat, it was slightly under-
charged; but the figure for gram was 89 instead of 53, and
another pulse (moth) was overcharged on the same scale.
The obvious explanation of this anomalv is that pulses
1 The prices considered to be reasonable in Akbar’s reign are given in
Ain, i. 60 ff. In J.R.A.S., 1918, p. 375 fi., I showed that the relation between
these prices was very much the same as existed in the years 1910-12, and
a similar relation holds in all the other figures I have tested. Prices of
wheat and gram, for instance, have varied enormously in the course of
six centuries, but the value of a pound of wheat in terms of a pound of
gram has been one of the most stable relations in history. It may be
well to add that this relation is obscured in some modern works, where the
wrong figure has been taken for gram. Two kinds of gram are referred
to occasionally in the chronicles, * Kabuli,”” which was an exotic, and cost
more than wheat, and ‘* black,” the common kind, which cost less. Edward
Thomas, in The Chronicles of the Pathan Kings of Delhi, p. 429, showed the
price of gram (nukhid) under Akbar as 164 dams; this represents the price
of the exotic. country gram being priced at 8 dams.
