APPENDIX E 
239 
offered is meant to be quite literal, except that conventional 
compliments are omitted or condensed; ambiguous expressions 
are given in the original, and discussed in the interpretation. 
[A] 
TRANSLATION. From! (or, At) the beginning of the reign, 
every year experts used to ascertain the price-currents, and 
lay them before the throne?; 
and, taking the schedule of crop-yields and the prices thereof, 
ised to fix the schedule of cash-rates; 
and abundant distress used to occur. 
Notes.—(1) The MSS. vary, as usual, between the prepositions 
az and dar. 
'2) The words wala dargah show that the prices to be used 
in commutation required the Emperor's sanction, a detail of 
some importance, because it helps to explain why commutation 
ultimately broke down. 
INTERPRETATION. This paragraph repeats the information 
given in an earlier chapter (i. 297), that at first Akbar adopted 
a schedule of crop-rates (ray) which had been sanctioned by 
Sher Shih, commuting the grain-Demand based on it into cash- 
rates (dastiir) on the basis of current prices; it adds only that the 
result was very unsatisfactory 
[B] 
TRANSLATION. When Khwija Abdul Majid Asaf Khan was 
Vazir, the jama-i wildyat was ragamsi, 
and “they” used to show! whatever they pleased with the 
pen of enhanced salary.? 
Seeing that the kingdom was not extensive, and that promotion 
of officers used to be frequent, 
there used to be increase and decrease from bribe-taking 
and self-interest. 
Notes. (1) There is no subject for the verb, which must be 
read as the common locution, impersonal for passive; I mark 
this locution by inverted commas. 
(2) Afziidatan is not in the dictionaries. I take Zan in the 
regular office-sense of “salary,” the phrase indicating that a 
rising salary-list was the motive for whatever was done at this 
time. 
INTERPRETATION. Abdul Majid had ceased to be Vazir in the 
2ighth year of the reign, when he had “turned from the pen to