46 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA

inconsistencies, and the final position of the chronicler is
not one of uncritical eulogy, nor yet of prejudiced detraction,
 but of astonishment and perplexity. He tells us that
he had never heard or read of such a character, he could not
place it in any known category, and, more than once, he
takes refuge in the view that the King was one of the
wonders of creation, in fact, a freak of nature. In such a
position, it is safe tc assume that the chronicler’s language
is exaggerated in both directions: he was striving to emphasise
 the contrasts presented by the reign—the King’s
brilliant gifts and his practical incompetence, or his subservience
 to the Khalifa and his disregard of Islamic law,
and both sides of the case are inevitably overstated. It is
advisable then to discount the chronicler’s superlatives, but
there is, so far as I can see, no reason to distrust his statements
 of fact regarding the King’s agrarian measures, the
only topic with which I am at present concerned.
For this reign we have no formal statement of agrarian
policy, and no direct indication of the King’s ideals; but we
have a series of episodes which fall into two groups, the
treatment of the provinces generally, and the special measures
 taken in the River Country. One of the King’s
earliest measures was an attempt to assimilate the administration
 of the outlying provinces to that of Delhi and
the River Country, which were, it will be recalled, directly
ander the Revenue Ministry The chronicler gives a
caustic description of this attempt at centralisation, which
is closely in accordance with his picture of the King as a
brilliant but unpractical man; he tells us of detailed accounts
being submitted from the most distant provinces, and of
the uttermost penny in them being wrangled over by the
audit staff at the capital; and he mentions that the experiment
 lasted only for a few years. The sequel is not
formally recorded, but two episodes show that the speculative
 Farmer supervened in the provinces. One episode
(p. 488) is that of a man who had taken a three-year farm
of Bidar, in the Deccan, for a payment of a kror of tankas.
The chronicler describes him as “by occupation a cornmerchant,
 timorous, incompetent”; he was a stranger to
the locality; and, when he found that he could not realise