#76 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA 
As regards the share of the produce which was to be taken 
as the basis of the assessment rates, the chronicle presents 
a difficulty. The translation says that one share was to be 
given to the cultivator and half a share to the headman, 
presumably as representing the State, and this would mean 
a claim to one-third of the produce; but this clause does not 
appear in any of the manuscripts I have seen, and, if it stood 
by itself, it might be an incorrect gloss. The point is, 
however, settled definitely by a chapter in the Ain,! which 
reproduces a schedule of Sher Shah’s assessment rates, 
showing the method by which they were calculated. For a 
few special crops, mainly vegetables, cash rates were fixed, 
and these are not recorded; but for all the principal staples, 
the “good,” “middling,” and “bad” yields per bigha were 
added up, one-third of the total was reckoned as the “average 
produce” (mahsil), and one-third of this was taken as the 
revenue-Demand. A single example will suffice; wheat 
was assumed, or calculated, to yield 18 maunds (good), 
12 (middling), and 8-35 (bad); the ‘‘average produce” 
obtained by totalling these figures and dividing by three 
comes tp 12-381, but was taken as 12-38%}, and the revenue- 
Demand on each bigha of wheat was one-third of this, or 
4 maunds, 123 sers. I have found nothing to show whether 
the Demand on the peasant was made in grain, or whether 
he was called on to pay cash at rates fixed by the adminis- 
tration; as has been explained in the last section, we know 
that collection in grain was reintroduced under the Lodi 
dynasty, while collection in cash was the rule in the early 
years of Akbar’s reign, but we do not know when the change 
was made. 
[n examining this schedule of rates, we must recognise 
that the units in which it is expressed are uncertain. Tt is 
given in the Ain as a document of merely historical interest, 
and, to my mind, it is highly improbable that the compiler 
should have taken the trouble to recalculate it in terms of 
Akbar’s bigha and maund, which were introduced after it 
had been finally discarded. We know from the Ain (i. 296) 
1 Ain, i. 297 ff.: Jarrett’s rendering (ii. 62) is not quite literal. Pro- 
fessor Qanungo, in his monograph on Sher Shak (Calcutta, 1921), argued 
{p. 373) that Sher Shih claimed only a fourth share. I have examined 
his arguments in detail in J.R.A.S., 1926, pp. 448 ff.