THE REIGN OF AKBAR (1556-1605) 83 
one-third of the average produce, stated in grain, with rates 
fixed in cash for a few crops only. Under Akbar, the actual 
Demand was made in all cases in cash, the grain-rates being 
commuted on the basis of current prices. This schedule 
could not be made to work. The terse official verdict? 
on it was, in literal version, that ‘abundant distress used 
to occur”; its use in the Reserved districts was suspended 
in the 13th year: and, after a short period of Group-asses- 
ment in those tracts, the second or ganiingo-rates were 
introduced. The actual working of both sets of rates can 
be traced in a chapter of the Ain entitled “The Nineteen- 
Year,” which requires a little preliminary explanation. 
The short text of the chapter? tells us merely that the 
figures appended to it, showing the cash-rates demanded in 
cach year on a bigha, were collected after the most diligent 
investigation; then follow tables arranged by provinces, 
showing the demand per bigha in dims (normally 40 to 
the rupee) on each crop in each year, from the 6th, which 
was presumably the earliest for which figures were available, 
to the 24th, when the practice of commutation was aban- 
doned. The figures are wanting in some manuscripts, and, 
where they have been copied, discrepancies are numerous, 
as is usually the case in such statistical tables. Blochmann, 
in his note to the text, describes the figures as a whole as 
antrustworthy, and this verdict may be taken as accurate, 
in the sense that no argument can safely be based on any 
particular item, because of the risk that that particular item 
may be corrupt; but even a careless copyist gives most of 
the figures before him correctly, and in this particular case 
we have the great advantage of a separate table of rates for 
each province. When the figures for all five provinces show 
a definite tendency in one direction, it is safe to accept them 
as evidence of what actually happened; and the instances in 
which this occurs are so numerous that, after analysing them 
n detail, I am convinced that the following account can 
be accepted as substantially accurate. 
! Farawan ranj rafti, Ain, i. 347. 
* Ain, i. 303 ff. Jarrett (ii. 69) suggests in a footnote some connection 
with the lunar cycle of nineteen years, but this appears to be unnecessary 
[ take it that the table gives all the figures that could be traced in the 
records, which happened to be for 19 vears.