254 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA

record, and the responsible officers are duly named in the earlier
paragraphs. Faulty condensation of a lengthy draft might
produce the illogicality of the text as it stands, but more than
this cannot be said.
The alternative is to treat the expression jama-i dahsila as
a bit- of jargon which had gained temporary currency in the
Ministry, and has survived only in these passages, denoting
neither aggregate-Demand nor Valuation, but the whole of the
special operations carried out in the Ministry in the 24th
year, operations which produced both the new schedules
of Demand and the new Valuation, each of them based on
“the Decade,” and consequently very closely related, though
the calculations must have been distinct. Taking the phrase as
an office-label of this sort, the illogicality disappears, because
the special operations denoted by it did in fact offer a remedy
for the emergency. The inadequacy of the account remains,
because only one operation is described where there must have
been two; but we have seen already that the Ain is on occasion
incomplete. In regard to the change in the 19th year,
the hiatus can be filled, as we have seen, from the Akbarnama;
in the present case, the Akbatnama merely summarises the Ain,
and does not complete it, but we are not entitled to hold Abul
Fazl down to meticulous detail, and it is not matter for surprise
that he should have contented himself with summarising his
materials on a matter of purely technical interest. Officelabels
 may depart far from etymology, and the use of a name
properly applicable to a part in order to denote the whole is
not inconceivable, when that part was the most important in
the eyes of the men who used the label.
This alternative then seems to me to be quite tenable, but it
is not established by evidence. The established facts are:
(1) new schedules of Demand-rates were introduced at this time,
and are on record in the Ain; (2) a new Valuation was required
at this time, because the practice of Assignment was being
revived; (3) the operation described in paragraph E would
give a satisfactory Valuation, but would not give the Demandschedules
 which are on record, and which we know to have
been used for assessment from this time onwards. The paragraph
must be read as describing the preparation of the new Valuation,
because it cannot be read in any other way consistent with the
established facts: the only point which remains uncertain is
the reason why it took its actual form.