240 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA 
the sword” (Akbarnama, ii. 182). I have not traced the date of 
his appointment to the post, but a passage quoted below shows 
that the reference is to the fifth year or earlier. \ 
As has been explained in Appendix A, the word jama, standing 
by itself, is ambiguous, and may mean either Demand or 
Valuation. Taking the former sense, the passage could mean 
only that at this time the Demand on the peasants was fixed 
arbitrarily to meet the rising salary-bill, and that corruption 
supervened. The word ragami, which by itself does not mean 
more than “written,” would on this interpretation have a 
derived sense, pointing to an assessment made merely with the 
pen, that is to say, not based on the facts of productivity, but 
framed to meet requirements. 
The following objections apply to this interpretation :— 
(1) The phrase jama-i wilayat is of the type which in other 
passages points to Valuation, not Demand. (2) At this time, 
salaries were ordinarily paid by Assignment, so that the change 
would not meet the emergency which is indicated: arbitrarily 
increased assessments might bring more money into the treasury 
from Reserved lands, but the treasury did not pay salaries as 
a general rule. (3) These arbitrary assessments would supersede 
the methods described in paragraph A, and would render detailed 
assessment-rates unnecessary: we should therefore have to 
regard the assessment-rates from the sixth year onwards, 
tabulated in Ain Niizdahsila, as irrelevant to the actual assess- 
ments. We should have two processes going on side by side— 
seasonal calculation of a mass of assessment-rates not intended 
to be used, and arbitrary fixing of the Demand without reference 
to the rates. (4) The idea of assessments fixed in the lump is 
something of an anachronism: all the discussions of this period 
point to rates applied to varying crop-areas, not to sums 
independent of the area of production. (5) We know from the 
Akbarnima (ii. 333) that assessment by rates charged on the 
measured area, the practice described in paragraph A, was in 
fact still in force in the Reserved areas in the twelfth year, 
because its discontinuance is recorded in the thirteenth year. 
We should have to infer then that this period of arbitrary assess- 
ments intervened between two periods of Measurement, though 
the resumption of Measurement is nowhere stated. 
All these difficulties disappear if we take the phrase jama-i 
wildyat to denote the Valuation. On this reading, the word 
vagami might either carry the meaning “arbitrary,” as suggested