THE REIGN OF AKBAR (1556-1605) 101

must not be taken too literally. His account of the collectors
 is a brief réview of a somewhat lengthy story;
he did not trouble to set out the dates, but concentrated,
as I read it, on the points which seemed to him of interest.
The following! is the portion which concerns us.
In this year [nineteenth regnal], a new idea reached the heart
for extending the cultivation of the country and improving
the condition of the peasants. The parganas of the empire,
dry or irrigated, in towns or hills, in deserts or jungles, by rivers,
reservoirs, or wells, were all to be measured . . . so that in the
course of three years all the waste land should be cultivated and
the treasury be benefited . . . .
Eventually these regulations were not properly observed.
A great portion of the country was laid waste through the
rapacity of the collectors, the wives and children of the peasants
were sold and scattered abroad, and everything was thrown into
confusion.
But the collectors were brought to account [muhdsaba] by
Rija Todar Mal, and many good men died from the severe
beatings which were administered, and from the tortures of
the rack and pincers. So many died from protracted con-Ainement
 in the prisons of the revenue authorities that there
was no need of executioner or swordsman, and no one cared
to find them graves or graveclothes.
These paragraphs furnish a good illustration of Badaiini’s
methods of work. The opening sentences are based on
Nizimuddin Ahmad’s Tabaqat-i Akbari, which he used
as the foundation of his chronicle, but the wording is
heightened almost to the point of distortion; and he then
breaks the chronological sequence of his narrative to record
the rest of the story, which is not alluded to in the earlier
chronicle. The points which require our attention are three,
the motive for the appointment of collectors, their subsequent
 misconduct, and Todar Mal’s drastic measures of
audit

As regards motive, Badafini represents that the object
of direct administration was to extend cultivation, benefit
the peasants, and increase the revenue; the official version
is, as we have seen, that the object was to remove the causes
of the dissatisfaction which was ruining the morale of the
\ Badauni, ii. 189. I follow generally Lowe's translation, as amended
n the errata-list. For the opening clause, Lowe gives “‘a new idea came
into his head,” but there is no person in the text to whom “his’’ can refer,
and I take the phrase to be impersonal, and contemptuous.