Class 12 history chapter 8 notes, Peasants zamindars and the state notes

Peasants zamindars and the state notes: Class 12 history chapter 8 notes

Textbook	NCERT
Class	Class 12
Subject	History
Chapter	Chapter 8
Chapter Name	Peasants zamindars and the state
Category	History Notes
Medium	English

Class 12 history chapter 8 notes, Peasants zamindars and the state notes here we will learn about the Mughal ruling system in agriculture, zamindars, rural artisans, Panchayat chiefs etc.

Introduction : –

🔹 During the 16th and 17th centuries about 85% of the population of India lived in its villages. Both peasants and landed elites were involved in agricultural production and claimed rights to a share of the produce.

🔹 At the same time agencies from outside also entered into the rural world. Most important among these was the Mughal state, which derived the bulk of its income from agricultural production.

Agricultural Society In Rural India ( Peasants and Agriculture Production ) : –

🔹 The basic unit of agricultural society was the village, inhabited by peasants who performed the manifold seasonal tasks that made up agricultural production throughout the year – tilling the soil, sowing seeds, harvesting the crop when it was ripe.

🔹 Further, they contributed their labour to the production of agro-based goods such as sugar and oil. Several kinds of areas such as large tracts of dry land or hilly regions were not cultivable in the same way as the more fertile expanses of land.

Main Sources to know the agrarian history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries : –

🔸 Chronicles and documents from the Mughal court : – One of the most important chronicles was the Ain-i Akbari authored by Akbar’s court historian Abu’l Fazl. Ain-i Akbari called Ain in short.

🔹 It recorded the arrangements made by the state to ensure cultivation, to enable the collection of revenue by the agencies of the state and to regulate the relationship between the state and rural magnates, the zamindars.

Other Sources Of Information : –

🔹 Apart from Ain-e-Akbari, among other sources of agricultural history, These include detailed revenue records from Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Further, the extensive records of the East India Company.

Why These sources important?

🔹 These sources provide us with useful descriptions of agrarian relations in eastern India. All these sources record instances of conflicts between peasants, zamindars and the state. In the process they give us an insight into peasants’ perception of and their expectations of fairness from the state.

Ain-i-Akbari : –

• It was a culmination of large historical, administrative project of classifications undertaken by Abull fazle at the order of Emperor of Akbar.
• It was completed in 1598 through five revisions.
• Ain-i-Akbari was a part of AKBARNAMA (Third Part).
• The Ain was organised as a compendium of imperial regulations and a gazetteer of the empire.

Content of Ain-i-Akbari : –

• Intricate and quantitative information of provinces.
• Description of various departments.
• Literary, cultural and religions traditions
• Physical layout of provinces
• Sources of revenue
• administration & army
• organisation of the count

Five parts of Ain-i-Akbari : –

🔹 Ain is a compilation of five parts (Daftars) in which the first three parts describe the Mughal administration and the fourth and fifth parts describe the religious, literary and cultural customs of the then people.

🔹 Ain is made up of five bookes : –

🔸 First is Manzil Abadi : – The first book, titled Manzil Abadi, deals with Imperial households and its maintenance.

🔸 Second is Sipal Abadi : – Sipah is about Military and civil administration.

🔸 Third is Mulk Abadi : – Mulk, is the part which gives detailed statistical information about geographic economic & topographic profile of Subas and their administrative fiscal divisions.

🔸 The fourth and fifth book (Daftars) deal with the religions, literary and cultural traditions of the people of India also contains a collection of Akbar’s “auspicious sayings.”

Information Related To agrarian history In Ain-E- Akbari : –

🔹 A complete account of the rules made by the state for the systematic management of agriculture has been presented in Ain-e- Akbari.

🔹 Complete details of plowing of fields, collection of taxes, regulation of relations between the state and rural magnates, etc. are also given in Ain-e-Akbari.

🔹 The central purpose of the Ain was to present a vision of Akbar’s empire where social harmony was provided by a strong ruling class. whatever we learn from the Ain about peasants remains a view from the top.

Information About Peasants : –

🔹 The term which Indo-Persian sources of the Mughal period most frequently used to denote a peasant was Raiyat, Muzarian, khurd-kashta and pahi-kashta. In addition, we also encounter the terms kisan or asami.

kinds of peasants : –

🔹 Sources of the seventeenth century refer to two kinds of peasants – khud-kashta and pahi-kashta.

• khud-kashta : – Khud-Kashta were residents of the village in which they held their lands.
• Pahi-kashta : – Pahi-Kashta were non-resident cultivators who belonged to some other village, but cultivated lands elsewhere on a contractual basis.

🔸 Note : – People became pahi-kashta either out of choice for example, when terms of revenue in a distant village were more favourable or out of compulsion or forced by economic distress after a famine.

Possessions of peasants : –

🔹 Seldom did the average peasant of north India possess more than a pair of bullocks and two ploughs; most possessed even less.

🔹 In Gujarat peasants possessing about six acres of land were considered to be affluent.

🔹 in Bengal, on the other hand, five acres was the upper limit of an average peasant farm; 10 acres would make one a rich asami.

Information About Cultivation : –

🔹 Cultivation was based on the principle of individual ownership. Peasant lands were bought and sold in the same way as the lands of other property owners.

🔹 Since the primary purpose of agriculture is to feed people, basic staples such as rice, wheat or millets were the most frequently cultivated crops.

🔹 Areas which received 40 inches or more of rainfall a year were generally rice-producing zones, followed by wheat and millets, corresponding to a descending scale of precipitation.

Factors that accounted for the constant expansion of Agriculture : –

• The abundance of land
• Available labour
• The mobility of peasants.

Irrigation Information : –

🔹 Monsoons remained the backbone of Indian agriculture, as they are even today. But there were crops which required additional water. Artificial systems of irrigation had to be devised for this.

🔹 Irrigation projects received state support as well. For example, in northern India the state undertook digging of new canals (nahr, nala) and also repaired old ones like the shahnahr in the Punjab during Shah Jahan’s reign.

Information About Techniques Used by peasants In Agriculture : –

🔹 In those times, peasants did use technologies that often harnessed cattle energy. One example was the wooden plough, which was light and easily assembled with an iron tip or coulter. It therefore did not make deep furrows, which preserved the moisture better during the intensely hot months.

🔹 A drill, pulled by a pair of giant oxen, was used to plant seeds, but broadcasting of seed was the most prevalent method.

🔹 Hoeing and weeding were done simultaneously using a narrow iron blade with a small wooden handle.

An abundance of crops ( Types of crops ) : –

🔹 Agriculture was organised around two major seasonal cycles, the kharif (autumn) and the rabi (spring). This would mean that most regions produced a minimum of two crops a year.

🔹 whereas some, where rainfall or irrigation assured a continuous supply of water, even gave three crops. This ensured an enormous variety of produce.

Example of Enormous variety of crops produce : –

🔹 we are told in the Ain that the Mughal provinces of Agra produced 39 varieties of crops and Delhi produced 43 over the two seasons. Bengal produced 50 varieties of rice alone.

🔹 However, the focus on the cultivation of basic staples did not mean that agriculture in medieval India was only for subsistence.

Cash Crops for Generating Revenue : –

1. The Mughal state also encouraged peasants to cultivate such crops as they brought in more revenue. Crops such as cotton and sugarcane were jins-i kamil par excellence.

2. Cotton was grown over a great swathe of territory spread over central India and the Deccan plateau, whereas Bengal was famous for its sugar. Such cash crops would also include various sorts of oilseeds and lentils.

🔹 This shows how subsistence and commercial production were closely intertwined in an average peasant’s holding.

New crops reached in India subcontinent : –

🔹 During the seventeenth century several new crops from different parts of the world reached the Indian subcontinent.

🔹 Maize (makka), for example, was introduced into India via Africa and Spain and by the seventeenth century it was being listed as one of the major crops of western India.

🔹 Vegetables like tomatoes, potatoes and chillies were introduced from the New World at this time, as were fruits like the pineapple and the papaya.

jins-i kamil : –

🔹 Cash crops have been called Jins-e-Kamil i.e. the perfect crops in Mughal sources. Sugarcane, cotton, oilseed crops (for example, mustard) were also called Jins-e- Kamil.

The spread of tobacco : –

🔹 This plant, which arrived first in the Deccan, spread to northern India in the early years of the seventeenth century. The Ain does not mention tobacco in the lists of crops in northern India.

🔹 Akbar and his nobles came across tobacco for the first time in 1604. At this time smoking tobacco (in hookahs or chillums) seems to have caught on in a big way. Jahangir was so concerned about its addiction that he banned it.

🔹 This was totally ineffective because by the end of the seventeenth century, tobacco had become a major article of consumption, cultivation and trade all over India.

The Village Community : –

🔹 In Village Community There were three constituents – the cultivators, the panchayat, and the village headman (muqaddam or mandal).

Caste and the Rural Milieu : –

🔹 Deep inequities on the basis of caste and other caste like distinctions meant that the cultivators were a highly heterogeneous group. Among those who tilled the land, there was a sizeable number who worked as menials or agricultural labourers.

🔸 Examples of caste discrimination : –

🔹 Despite the abundance of cultivable land, certain caste groups were assigned menial tasks and thus relegated to poverty. Such groups comprised a large section of the village population, had the least resources and were constrained by their position in the caste hierarchy, much like the Dalits of modern India.

🔹 In Muslim communities menials like the halalkhoran (scavengers) were housed outside the boundaries of the village; similarly, the mallahzadas (literally, sons of boatmen) in Bihar were comparable to slaves.

• In Marwar, Rajputs are mentioned as peasants, sharing the same space with Jats, who were accorded a lower status in the caste hierarchy.
• The Gauravas, who cultivated land in Uttar Pradesh sought Rajput status in the seventeenth century.
• Castes such as the Ahirs, Gujars and Malisrose in the hierarchy because of the profitability of cattle rearing and horticulture.
• In the eastern regions, intermediate pastoral and fishing castes like the Sadgops and Kaivartas acquired the status of peasants.

Panchayats and headmen : –

🔹 Village panchayat was an assembly of elders, generally important people of village with hereditary rights over their property.

🔹 An oligarchy, panchayat represented various castes and communities in village, though village menial- cum-agricultural worker was unlikely to be represented there. Decisions made by these panchayats were binding on members.

Information About headmen : –

🔹 The panchayat was headed by a headman known as muqaddam or mandal.

🔹 Headman was chosen through the consensus of the village elders, and that this choice had to be ratified by the zamindar.

🔹 Headmen held office as long as they enjoyed the confidence of the village elders, failing which they could be dismissed by them.

🔹 The chief function of the headman was to supervise the preparation of village accounts, assisted by the accountant or patwari of the panchayat.

Panchayats funds and it’s used : –

🔹 The panchayat derived its funds from contributions made by individuals to a common financial pool.

🔹 These funds were used for defraying the costs of entertaining revenue officials who visited the village from time to time.

🔹 Expenses for community welfare activities such as tiding over natural calamities (like floods), were also met from these funds.

🔹 Often these funds were also deployed in construction of a bund or digging a canal which peasants usually could not afford to do on their own.

Functions Of Panchayats And headmen : –

• One important function of the panchayat was to ensure that caste boundaries among the various communities inhabiting the village were upheld.
• In eastern India all marriages were held in the presence of the mandal.
• Panchayats also had the authority to levy fines and inflict more serious forms of punishment like expulsion from the community.

Jati Panchayat : –

🔹 In addition to the village panchayat each caste or jati in the village had its own jati panchayat. These panchayats wielded considerable power in rural society. In Rajasthan jati panchayats arbitrated civil disputes between members of different castes.

🔸 Functions of Jati Panchayat : – They mediated in contested claims on land, decided whether marriages were performed according to the norms laid down by a particular caste group, determined who had ritual precedence in village functions, and so on.

🔹 In most cases, except in matters of criminal justice, the state respected the decisions of jati panchayats.

Expulsion from the community : –

🔹 The latter was a drastic step and was in most cases meted out for a limited period. It meant that a person forced to leave the village became an outcaste and lost his right to practise his profession. Such a measure was intended as a deterrent to violation of caste norms.

Corrupt mandals : –

🔹 The mandals often misused their positions. They were principally accused of defrauding village accounts in connivance with the patwari, and for underassessing the revenue they owed from their own lands in order to pass the additional burden on to the smaller cultivator.

Regulation of village society by the head of Panchayat ( in short points ) : –

• Assembly of elders.
• the decisions made by these panchayats were binding on the members.
• Headman of Panchayata was known as ‘muqaddam’ or ‘Mandal’
• He was chosen by elders and had to ratified by Zamindars of that area.
• the chief function of headman was to supervise the village account.
• The panchayat derived its funds from contribution made by individuals to a common financial pool.
• These funds were used to defraying the costs of entertaining revenue officers and for community welfare activities and to get rid of natural calamities.
• One important function of Panchayats was to ensure the cast boundaries among the various communities inhabiting in the village.
• Marriages were held in the presence of ‘Mandal’.
• Panchayat also had the authority to levy fines and inflict more serious forms of punishment like expulsion from the community
• In addition to the village panchayat each caste or jati had its own powerful Panchayats.

Village artisans : –

🔹 Marathi documents and village surveys made in the early years of British rule have revealed the existence of substantial numbers of artisans, sometimes as high as 25 per cent of the total households in the villages.

🔹 At times, however, the distinction between artisans and peasants in village society was a fluid one, as many groups performed the tasks of both.

Functions of village artisans : –

🔹 Cultivators and their families would also participate in craft production such as dyeing, textile printing, baking and firing of pottery, making and repairing agricultural implements.

🔹 Phases in the agricultural calendar when there was a relative lull in activity, as between sowing and weeding or between weeding and harvesting, were a time when cultivators could engage in artisanal production.

🔹 Village artisans – potters, blacksmiths, carpenters, barbers, even goldsmiths – also provided specialised services.

Compensate for the services of village artisans ( miras or watan ) : –

🔹 They were compensated by villagers for his work by a variety of means.

🔹 The most common way of doing so was by giving them a share of the harvest, or an allotment of land, perhaps cultivable wastes, which was likely to be decided by the panchayat.

🔹 In Maharashtra such lands became the artisans’ miras or watan – their hereditary holding.

Jajmani system : –

🔹 Eighteenth-century records tell us of zamindars in Bengal who remunerated blacksmiths, carpenters, even goldsmiths for their work by paying them “a small daily allowance and diet money”. This later came to be described as the jajmani system.

Village as a “little republic” : –

🔹 Some British officials in the nineteenth century saw the village as a “little republic”. Because villages were made up of fraternal partners of sharing resources and labour in a collective. However, this was not a sign of rural egalitarianism.

🔹 There was individual ownership of assets and deep inequities based on caste and gender distinctions. A group of powerful individuals decided the affairs of the village, exploited the weaker sections and had the authority to dispense justice.

Money in the village ( Shroff ) : –

🔹 The seventeenth-century French traveller Jean-Baptiste Tavernier found it remarkable that in “India a village must be very small indeed if it has not a money- changer called a Shroff.

🔹 (They) act as bankers to make remittances of money (and who) enhance the rupee as they please for paisa and the paisa for these (cowrie) shells”.

Role of women in the agrarian society during the Mughal period ( in short points ) : –

• Women an men had to work shoulder to shoulder in the fields. Women sowed, needed threshed and winnowed the harvest.
• Nonetheless biases related to women’s biological functions did continue.
• Artisanal tasks such as spinning yarn, sitting and kneading day for pottery and embroidery were among the many aspects of production dependent of a on female labour.
• They were considered as an important source en agrarian society because they were child bearers.
• Due to malnutrition, frequent pregnancies and death during child birth, there was a high mortality rate.
• The women were kept under strict control.
• Documents from western India Rajsthan, Gujrat and Maharashtra record petitions sent by women to village panchayats, seeking redness and justice.
• Amongst the landed gentry women had the right to inherit property, ex. Punjab show the women as the seller of property.

Role Of Women In agrarian Society ( in detail ) : –

🔹 the production process often involves men and women performing certain specified roles. women and men had to work shoulder to shoulder in the fields. Men tilled and ploughed, while women sowed, weeded, threshed and winnowed the harvest.

🔹 Menstruating women were not allowed to touch the plough or the potter’s wheel in western India, or enter the groves where betel-leaves (paan) were grown in Bengal.

🔹 Artisanal tasks such as spinning yarn, sifting and kneading clay for pottery, and embroidery were among the many aspects of production dependent on female labour. The more commercialised the product, the greater the demand on women’s labour to produce it.

🔹 Women were considered an important resource in agrarian society also because they were child bearers in a society dependent on labour.

Issues faced by Women ( shortage of wives ) : –

🔹 High mortality rates among women owing to malnutrition, frequent pregnancies, death during childbirth often meant a shortage of wives.

🔹 This led to the emergence of social customs in peasant and artisan communities that were distinct from those prevalent among elite groups.

🔹 Marriages in many rural communities required the payment of bride-price rather than dowry to the bride’s family.

🔹 Remarriage was considered legitimate both among divorced and widowed women.

Punishing Men And Women For Walking On The Wrong Path : –

🔹 The household was headed by a male. Thus women were kept under strict control by the male members of the family and the community. They could inflict draconian punishments if they suspected infidelity on the part of women.

🔹 Wives protested against the infidelity of their husbands or the neglect of the wife and children by the male head of the household, the grihasthi. While male infidelity was not always punished, the state and “superior” caste groups did intervene when it came to ensuring that the family was adequately provided for.

🔹 In most cases when women petitioned to the panchayat, their names were excluded from the record: the petitioner was referred to as the mother, sister or wife of the male head of the household.

Women’s Right To Property : –

🔹 Amongst the landed gentry, women had the right to inherit property. Instances from the Punjab show that women, including widows, actively participated in the rural land market as sellers of property inherited by them.

🔹 Hindu and Muslim women inherited zamindaris which they were free to sell or mortgage.

🔹 Women zamindars were known in eighteenth-century Bengal. In fact, one of the biggest and most famous of the eighteenth-century zamindaris, that of Rajshahi, had a woman at the helm.

Forest dwellers during Mughal period (16th & 17th Century) ( in short points ) : –

• Forest dwellers were of 40% of total populations
• They were existed all over eastern India, central india, northern India Jharkhand and western ghat and Deccan Plateau.
• Forest dwellers were termed Jangali (those whose livelihood came from the gathering of forest products, hunting etc)
• They were dependent on shifting cultivation, & they were wonderers also.
• Those activities were seasonal like for Bhills, spring was reserved for collecting forest products, summer for fishing and monsoon months for cultivation and autumn and winter for hunting.
• For the state the forest was a subversive place a place of refuge (Mango) for troublemakers.

Forests and Tribes : –

🔹 With the exception of the deeply cultivated areas of northern and north-western India, large parts of the land were covered with forests or bushes (Kharbandi).

🔹 Such areas included Jharkhand, the entire eastern India, central India, northern India (including the Terai on the Indo-Nepal border), the Western Ghats of Southern India and the Deccan plateaus, etc., which were covered with forests. Forests covered about forty percent of the area.

People living in forests : –

🔹 The people living in the forests earned their living from forest products, hunting and shifting agriculture. The community of people living in the forests was called Kabila.

Babur’s remark on the forest dwellers : –

🔹 He considered the forest to be a subversive place-a refuge (mawas) for trouble makers to hide and avoid paying taxes.

🔹 Babur says that jungles provided a good defence “behind which the people of the pargana become stubbornly rebellious and pay no taxes”.

Intrusion into the forest : –

🔹 The Mughal state required elephants for the army. So the peshkash levied from forest people often included a supply of elephants.

🔹 In the Mughal political ideology, the hunt symbolised the overwhelming concern of the state to ensure justice to all its subjects, rich and poor.

🔹 Rulers went for regular hunting expeditions which enabled the emperor to travel across the extensive territories of his empire and personally attend to the grievances of its inhabitants.

Exchange of Commodities : –

🔹 The spread of commercial agriculture was an important external factor that impinged on the lives of those who lived in the forests. Forest products -like honey, beeswax and gum lac, elephants were in great demand.

🔹 Some, such as gum lac, became major items of overseas export from India in the seventeenth century. The exchange of commodities took place via the barter system as well.

🔹 For example, the Lohanis in the Punjab engaged with overland trade with countries like Afghanistan, along with trade within the Punjab region.

Social changes in the lives of forest dwellers : –

🔹 Social factors also brought changes in the lives of forest dwellers. Like the head men of the villages, tribes also had their chieftains. The chieftains of tribes became zamindars and some even became kings. Tribal Kings recruited people from their lineage groups or demanded that their fraternity in order to build up their army.

• For example, Tribes in the Sind region had armies comprising 6,000 cavalry and 7,000 infantry.
• In Assam, the Ahom kings had their paiks, people who were obliged to render military service in exchange for land. The capture of wild elephants was made a monopoly of the Ahom kings.

Transition from a tribal to monarchical system : –

🔹 The transition from a tribal to a monarchical system had started much earlier in India.

🔹 Ain-i-Akbari observes the presence of tribal kingdoms in the north east. War was a common occurrence between tribal kingdoms in the north-east.

🔸 For example, The Koch kings fought and subjugated a number of neighbouring tribes in a long sequence of wars through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Zamindars and his powers : –

🔹 In rural society, high status owners were zamindars who enjoyed some special social and economic facilities. They were the owners of their own land and collected taxes from the people as representatives of the state, who also had their own forts and military units, which included groups of cavalry, artillery and foot soldiers.

🔹 If we imagine the social relations in the villages of the Mughal period in the form of a pyramid, then the zamindars were part of its narrow top. Abul Fazl points out that the “higher caste” Brahmin-Rajput coalition already had a solid control over rural society.

Role of Zamindars in Mughal Period : –

• They lived off agriculture but did not participate directly in the processes of agricultural production.
• Zamindars enjoyed contain social and economic privileges by virtue of their superior status in rural society.
• They held extensive personal lands termed milkiyet meaning property.
• To collect the revenue on behalf of the state and control over military resources, were the sources of power.
• Most Zamindars had fortresses (qilarchas) as well as an armed contingent comprising unit of caralasy, artillery and a infantry.
• According to documents the process of Zanindari consolidation was slow
  • (a) by coloniasation of new lands
  • (b) by transfer of right
  • (c) by the order of state
  • (d) by purchase
• A combination of factors also allowed the consolidation of Zanindasies. Ex. Jatt, the Rajputs south west Bengal, peasent Pastoralists (like the Sadgops) carved out powerful Zanindasies
• They were also helpful for peasents for ex. giving the worle in their fields and give them money in need.
• Zamindars also received the support of the peasantry in their struggle against the state.

Ways To Acquire Zamindari : –

🔹 Colonisation of new lands, by transfer of rights, by order of the state and by purchase. These were the processes which perhaps permitted people belonging to the relatively “lower” castes to enter the rank of zamindars as zamindaris were bought and sold quite briskly in this period.

Combined military strength of the zamindars : –

🔹 According to the Ain, the combined military strength of the zamindars in Mughal India was 384,558 cavalry, 4,277,057 infantry, 1,863 elephants, 4,260 cannons, and 4,500 boats.

Cooperation Of Zamindars In The Society : –

🔹 Zamindars spearheaded the colonisation of agricultural land.

• helped in settling cultivators by providing them with the means of cultivation, including cash loans.
• The buying and selling of zamindaris accelerated the process of monetisation in the countryside.
• zamindars sold the produce from their milkiyat lands.
• There is evidence to show that zamindars often established markets (haats) to which peasants also came to sell their produce.

🔹 There can be little doubt that zamindars were an exploitative class, their relationship with the peasantry had an element of reciprocity, paternalism and patronage. This is the reason why farmers supported the zamindars in the agrarian uprisings against the state in the 17th century.

Classification of land during Akbar’s reign : –

• Polaj is land which is annually cultivated for each rop in succession and is never allowed to lie follow.
• Parauti is land left out of cultivation for time that its may recover its strength.
• Chachar is land that has lain follow for three or four years.
• Banjar is land unceltivated for five years or more.

Land Revenue : –

🔹 Revenue from the land was the economic main stay of the Mughal Empire.

🔹 It was therefore vital for the state to create an administrative apparatus to ensure control over agricultural productions, and to fix and collect revenue from across the length and breadth of the rapidly expanding empire.

🔹 This apparatus included the office (daftar) of the diwan who was responsible for supervising the fiscal system of the empire. The fiscal system in the Mughal period was conducted under the supervision of Diwan.

Land revenue system : –

🔹 The Mughal state tried to first acquire specific information about the extent of the agricultural lands in the empire and what these lands produced before fixing the burden of taxes on people. The land revenue arrangements consisted of two stages

• first, assessment and
• then actual collection.

🔹 The jama was the amount assessed, as opposed to hasil, the amount collected.

🔹 Akbar decreed ordered amil-guzaror revenue collector that he should strive to make cultivators pay in cash, the option of payment in kind was also to be kept open. While fixing revenue, the attempt of the state was to maximise its claims.

Amin : –

🔹 Amin was an official responsible for ensuring that imperial regulations were carried out in the provinces.

The mansabdari system : –

🔹 The Mughal administrative system had at its apex a military- cum-bureaucratic apparatus (mansabdari) which was responsible for looking after the civil and military affairs of the state.

🔹 Some mansabdars were paid in cash (naqdi), while the majority of them were paid through assignments of revenue (jagirs) in different regions of the empire. They were transferred periodically.

The Flow of Silver coin into Mughal Empire : –

🔹 Voyages of discovery and the opening up of the New World (America) resulted in a massive expansion of India’s trade with Europe.

🔹 An expanding trade brought in huge amounts of silver bullion into Asia to pay for goods procured from India, and a large part of that bullion gravitated towards India.

🔹 This was good for India as it did not have natural resources of silver. As a result, the period between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries was also marked by a remarkable stability in the availability of metal currency, particularly the silver rupya in India.

🔹 This facilitated an unprecedented expansion of minting of coins and the circulation of money in the economy as well as the ability of the Mughal state to extract taxes and revenue in cash.

Translating the Ain : –

🔹 Given the importance of the Ain, it has been translated for use by a number of scholars. Henry Blochmann edited it and the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta (present-day Kolkata), published it in its Bibliotheca Indica series.

🔹 The book has also been translated into English in three volumes. The standard translation of Volume 1 is that of Henry Blochmann (Calcutta 1873). The other two volumes were translated by H.S. Jarrett (Calcutta 1891 and 1894).

Limitations of Ain-i-Akbari : –

🔹 Although the Ain was officially sponsored to record detailed information to facilitate Emperor Akbar, it was much more than a reproduction of official papers. That the manuscript was revised five times by the author would suggest a high degree of caution on the part of Abu’l Fazl and a search for authenticity.

🔹 For instance, oral testimonies were cross-checked and verified before being incorporated as “facts” in the chronicle. In the quantitative sections, all numeric data were reproduced in words so as to minimise the chances of subsequent transcriptional errors.

🔹 Historians who have carefully studied the Ain point out that it is not without its problems. Numerous errors in totalling have been detected. These are ascribed to simple slips of arithmetic or of transcription by Abu’lFazl’s assistants.

🔹 Data were not collected uniformly from all provinces. For instance, while for many subas detailed information was compiled about the caste composition of the zamindars, such information is not available for Bengal and Orissa.

🔹 Further, while the fiscal data from the subas is remarkable for its richness, some equally vital parameters such as prices of commodities and wages of workers from these same areas are not as well documented.

🔹 These limitations notwithstanding, the Ain remains an extraordinary document of its times. By providing fascinating glimpses into the structure and organisation of the Mughal Empire and by giving us quantitative information about its products and people.