Full text: The agrarian system of Moslem India

APPENDIX E 
245 
This could easily be done by applying the rates shown in the 
new schedules to actual, or estimated, crop-areas. Actual 
areas would be on record for the Reserved lands, but in the 
case of Assignments it might be necessary to estimate, if the 
records of area were not considered satisfactory, or were not 
available. 
(3) On the basis of these calculations a new Valuation was 
made: not, as we are told, identical with the calculated Demand, 
Sut near it, and thus a great improvement on the old Valuation, 
which had lost all touch with facts. 
The reform then was twofold, providing new schedules of 
assessment-rates, and also a new Valuation, the two things 
which were wanted. The Ain mentions both: the Akbarnama 
is dealing only with Valuation, and says nothing about assessment- 
rates, which the author had not in view. 
The schedules are not described, or incorporated, in the Ain, 
but it is possible to infer their nature. We know from another 
chapter in the Ain (i. 297) that the basic rule—one-third of the 
average produce—which gave the original Demand-rates, was 
still in force in the fortieth regnal year, and we are justified in 
inferring that the fagsims conformed to it. We know further 
that the fagsims, like the original schedule, showed the Demand 
in terms of produce, because seasonal commutation was still 
required, as the next paragraph of the text will show. The 
fact that the work was done by the ganiingos, the repositories 
of local agrarian knowledge, makes it certain that the schedules 
were local. A separate schedule was prepared for each pargana, 
and deposited, as such, in the record-office: this can mean only 
that assessment was now based on local productivity, not on 
the average productivity of the empire. Analysis of the rates 
actually charged, as given in Ain Nizdahsila, shows clearly 
that there was in fact a general change in assessment in the 
15th year; new crops then come into the schedules, the 
provinces diverge more widely, and, inside each province, the 
gap between maximum and minimum rates widens—as would 
necessarily follow when local schedules replaced a general one, 
because there would then be, inside the province, two variables 
instead of one, rates and prices, instead of prices only. 
These considerations. taken together, appear to me to settle 
the nature of the fagsimat-i mulk. That they were not in- 
corporated in the Ain can be accounted for by their bulk. The 
original schedule, which is given as a historical document, fills
	        
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