210 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA
the sense of Demand; the only exceptions which have been
noticed are a few rhetorical passages where the plural is used
to signify exactions in a wide sense—" demands.” not “Demand.”
—and these are easily recognised.
2. MAL. The general sense is ‘‘wealth,” or “ property,”
but in administrative use two special senses are found.
(¢) In the military department. the word meant ‘booty
taken in war.”
() In fiscal administration, it ordinarily meant Demand;
but occasionally it was used more widely to denote the whole
system under which Demand was assessed and collected, as in
the phrase mulki wa mali, which corresponds to the now familiar
“general” and. “revenue” administration.
The two speciai senses are sometimes difficult to distinguish.
Thus in a passage in the Akbarndma (iii. 316), Mr. Beveridge
rendered “revenue,” where I think “booty” would make better
sense, because the officers whose morale was being destroyed
by untimely claims for mal were not usually Demand-payers,
the point is, I think, that they were being pressed to account
for booty which they were alleged to have misappropriated.
Ordinarily, however, there is no difficulty in discovering which
sense is intended.
Mil is sometimes found in combination. Malwajibl is a
recognised term for Demand, and is not ambiguous. Malguzar
is usually adjectival, meaning “Demand-paying”’; the modern
use as a substantive, ‘‘ Demand-payer,” has not been noted in
the literature earlier than Khwafi Khan, where it appears
(e.g. i. 704). Malguzari denotes the act, or process, of Demand-
paying. I have not found it used in its modern sense of Demand
in the Persian literature; but the sense occurs in one of the
earliest British records (Rev. Sel., I. 169)
3. Next may be noted a group of expressions which are
picturesque but also precise, denoting Demand, regarded as the
King’s remuneration. They are compounded of a word meaning
wages, such as paranj or dastmuzd, and another meaning
sovereignty (as jahdnbani), or guardianship (as pasbani) They
have been noticed only in sixteenth-centurv documents. e.g.
Ain, i. 208.
4. BAzkuwAsT and BAZYAFT are occasionally used for the
Demand on cultivation, but they belong properly to the Accounts
side of the administration. and usually mean “recovery”; that
