THE REIGN OF AKBAR (1556-1605) 121 
points clearly to assessment on the village or larger unit, 
but leaves room for doubt whether the assessment was 
made with the headmen or with farmers. In this position 
there is of course no record of sanctioned assessment rates, 
and the eighteenth-century tradition that Todar Mal made 
1 detailed assessment on the individual peasants is un- 
supported by any contemporary evidence. 
ORISSA appears in the Account as part of Bengal, and its 
assessment methods are not described separately. Judging 
by the form of the statistics, the position was similar to 
that of Bengal; but two districts, Kalang Dandpat and 
Rij Mahandra, were obviously held as units by Chiefs, 
and there are indications of Chiefs’ holdings in some of the 
other districts on a smaller scale. 
To the East of Orissa lay a region which is sometimes 
referred to as the province of Gondwana, but no such province 
had been constituted at this time. The territory was in 
possession of independent Chiefs, or of Chiefs who had made 
some kind of submission; and the holdings of the latter 
class are entered under adjoining provinces. Passing over 
this territory, we come to BERAR. At the time of conquest, 
this province had for a long time been under nasag, and this 
arrangement was maintained by Akbar; as in the case of 
Bengal, it remains uncertain whether the village-assess- 
ments were made with the headmen or with farmers. The 
creater portion of the province was, however, obviously 
left in the possession of Chiefs, and some subdivisions, 
though their names appear in the statistics, were admittedly 
still independent. 
KHANDESH, the Dandes of the Ain, was a small province, 
organised as a single district, lying just South of the Narbada. 
The assessment system in force is not specified, but the 
form of the statistics suggests that it may have been similar 
to that of Berar. 
GUJARAT, the last province on the list, presents certain 
difficulties. It was not brought under direct administra- 
tion in the 1gth year, so assessment rates for it could not 
have been prepared on the usual lines, nor are any assess- 
ment schedules on record. In the text of the Account we 
find the phrase ‘mostly nasag, and Measurement is little