232 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA
IV. FIrUz SHAH'S ASSESSMENT.
(Text, Afif, 94. I have found no translation; only one
sentence is given in Elliot, iii. 288.)
I. The king . . . settled the Demand(zr) of the kingdom
afresh. And for the settlement of that Demand Khwaia Hisa-
muddin Junid was appointed.
2. The excellent Khwaja, having spent six years in the
kingdom,
3. [and] having settled the Demand according to the “rule
of inspection,” (2)
4. determined the “aggregate”(3) of the kingdom at 675
lakhs of tankas in accordance with the principle of sovereignty.
5. During forty years during the reign of Firiiz Shah the
aggregate’ of Delhi was the same.
NorTEes.
(1) “Demand,” mahsul. Afif occasionally uses this word in the sense
of revenue Demand, that is, as a synonym for khardj, never, so far as I
can find, in the other sense of ‘ produce of the scil.”” which occurs in some
later writers.
(2) ‘Rule of inspection,” hukm-i mushdhada, occurs, so far as I know,
nowhere else in the literature Barni tells us in the preceding passage
that Firdz, at his accession, adopted the ‘““rule of the produce.” Afif’s
account refers to the same period, for this appointment was made very
soon after the King’s first arrival at Delhi; either then one of the writers
made a mistake, or the two expressions mean the same thing. A mistake
is improbable, for old bureaucrats like the writers do not misuse technical
terms: on the other hand, Afif’s vocabulary differs from that of Barni in
several cases, such as ‘‘khit’ or ‘“‘pargana,’”’ so that verbal divergence
need not suggest error. The general idea conveyed by mushahada is
“witnessing,” ‘‘observing’’; and in order to reconcile the two statements,
all that is necessary is to take this word as denoting Sharing-by-estimation,
the reference being to the persons who observe or inspect the condition
of the growing crop in order to estimate the yield. We may say then that,
while Barni tells us that Sharing was prescribed, Afif tells us that it was
Sharing by Estimation, not actual Division. On this interpretation the
disappearance of the term mushiahada can be readily understood, because
the official literature of the Mogul period employs the Hindi name kankii
to denote the process in question.
The revenue-Demand under this system varied from season to season
with the area sown and the produce reaped, so that the phrase ‘‘ to settle,”
bastan, must not be read in the sense of fixing beforehand the number of
tankas to be paid; I take the meaning to be that the arrangements for
assessment were reorganised after the confusion which had developed
during the previous reign.
(3) ‘‘Aggregate,” jama, has in the later literature two well-defined
senses. as has been .explained in Appendix A. Used for jama-i mal. it
