78 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA 
trouble Akbar. The ten years which followed Sher Shah’s 
death were a period of confusion, during which we naturally 
hear little of the revenue administration. Islam Shah, 
we are told, replaced Assignments by cash salaries, and 
abolished all the old regulations regarding them?!; but we 
find him shortly afterwards offering a choice of Assignments 
to his brother, and converting cash stipends into Grants 
of land, so that no permanent change in policy can be in- 
ferred, and his action was probably intended merely to bring 
under closer control influential men whom he had reason to 
distrust. With this exception there is nothing to record, 
and we may fairly assume that the Revenue Ministry, now 
known as Diwani, not Diwan, continued, in the absence of 
orders to the contrary, to carry out Sher Shah’s system in 
so much of the kingdom as remained intact. 
In my opinion, it would be a mistake to suppose that 
conquests of themselves made much difference to this 
permanent institution. The chief motive of a conqueror, 
as distinct from a raider, was to secure the revenue of the 
conquered territory; and, in order to do so, he would have 
to rely at the outset on the existing machinery for assess- 
ment and collection. The immediate effect of a conquest 
would be, on the one hand, to replace some assignees by 
others, leaving the assignment-system intact; and, on the 
other hand, to give the Ministry a new master, whose orders 
would be carried out when they were received. If he gave 
no new orders, the Ministry would presumably follow the 
most recent orders, interpreting them in the light of de- 
partmental tradition, but not making formal changes with- 
out due authority. A strong King, like Ghiyasuddin 
Tughlaq in the fourteenth, or Sher Shah in the sixteenth 
century, might inaugurate his reign by the introduction 
of new methods: conquerors of a different stamp might be 
content to accept the methods which they found. Where 
then there is no record of a change, it is reasonable to 
assume administrative continuity; but in the period we 
are now approaching, assumption is unnecessary, for we 
shall see in the next chapter that Akbar began by adopting 
Sher Shiah’s methods, and changed them only when they 
had definitely broken down. 
1 Elliot, iv. 470-81. v. 487.