262 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA 
from the 24th year onwards makes it certain that a 
Valuation of the Empire must have been in regular use in the 
Revenue Ministry. We must then choose between two alter- 
natives: either the compilers of the Account incorporated the 
Valuation current at the time; or they collected a vast amount 
of information, not already on record, regarding the current 
Demand made on the peasants by a multitude of assignees, 
which they incorporated with the Ministry’s figures for Demand 
in the Reserved areas. The former course would be obvious, 
natural, and easy; the latter would be exceedingly difficult, 
and I doubt whether it would have even suggested itself to the 
compilers in the circumstances of the time. I have found no 
direct evidence on the question, and it is necessary to enquire 
which alternative is supported by the statistics. 
We may allow that it would have been possible, though diffi- 
cult, to collect figures for Demand from the assignees; and that, 
in the provinces where Measurement was in force, the areas 
assessed could have been obtained from the same sources with a 
few exceptions, represented by the blanks for some subdivisions 
in the statistics. We may allow further that it might have been 
possible to obtain figures for Chiefs’ holdings, representing either 
the tribute paid by the Chiefs, or their Demand on their peasants 
—we cannot say which. There remains what seems to me the 
insuperable difficulty of accounting for the figures for areas 
lying outside the Empire. These are found principally under the 
province of Bengal: how can we explain the detailed figures for, 
e.g. the district of Chittagong (Ain, i. 406), which was never 
administered by Akbar, either directly or through assignees? 
I can detect no relevance in the collocation of Demand with the 
strength of the local forces, or various other details given in the 
statistics, but these are matters of minor importance: the figures 
for areas outside the Empire are, to my mind, the great obstacle 
to accepting the hypothesis that we are dealing with statements 
of Demand, compiled specially for the *“ Account.” 
The alternative view, that we have here the current Valuation 
of the Empire, presents no difficulty. For the older provinces, 
this would be the Valuation made in the 24th year, but kept up 
to date; while for the newer provinces we would have figures 
representing the Valuation made at the time of annexation. 
Taking as an example of the older provinces the paragraph 
relating to Agra, which has been quoted above, we have, first, 
the total Valuation. From the latter we have of course to