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original schedule, which is given as a historical document, fills