empire. Fírúz Sháh's revenue in A.D. 1351-1388 is fixed at £6,850,000, and that of Bábar in A.D. 1526-1530 at £2,600,000.1

The contrast of the relatively large income of Fírúz Sháh, with his avowedly narrowed boundaries, would naturally seem to conflict with the reduced total confessed to by Bábar, who boasted of so much greater a breadth of territory; but these difficulties are susceptible of various simple explanations. In Fírúz Sháh's forty years of undisturbed repose, the country was positively full to overflowing of the precious metals, which had been uniformly attracted towards the capital from various causes for nearly a century previously. The bullion resources of the metropolitan provinces may be tested by the multitude of the extant specimens of the gold and silver coinages of the previous reigns, and the confessed facility with which millions might be accumulated by officials of no very high degree. The whole land was otherwise teeming with material wealth, and was administered by Hindú vazirs and other home-taught men, who realized every fraction that the State could claim.

Far different were the circumstances which Bábar's limited tenure of his straggling conquests presented. Tímúr had already effectually ruined the land through which his plundering hordes had passed-what his followers could not carry away they destroyed; and while the distant provinces retained their metallic stores, the old capital and all around it was impoverished to desolation; so that when the prestige of Dehli re-asserted itself under Buhlól Lódi, he was forced to resort to the indigenous copper mines for a new currency

1 See "Chronicles of the Pathan Kings," p. 272, note (the figures for Fírúz's revenues in Sir H. Elliot's Historians, vol. iii. p. 288, are partially corrected at p. 346 of the same volume, where the written sum is 6,85,00,000 tankahs). Bábar's returns are given at p. 388 of my work.

("Chronicles," p. 361); and though public affairs and national prosperity improved under his son Sikandar, the standard coin was only raised to something like silver to the copper basis, which, however, secured a more portable piece, and a more creditable value, in a currency which found ready acceptance with races who had already been educated in the theory of mixed metals. The substantial development of Hindústán under Ibrahim, the son of Sikandar, was absolutely unprecedented. Cheapness and plenty became fabulous even to the native mind, but this very prosperity of the people reduced, pari passu, the income of the king, which was derived directly from the produce of the land, his dues being payable in kind; so that when corn was cheap the money value of his revenues declined in nearly equal proportion.1 And thus it came about that when Bábar examined the accumulated treasures of the house of Lódi, on the capture of Agrah, he found but little beyond the current copper coinage, leavened, as it was, with a small modicum of silver.

The statistical returns of Bábar's time were clearly based upon the old rent-rolls of that unacknowledged contributor to the efficiency of all later Indian revenue systems, Sikandar bin Buhlól. A single subdued confession in Bábar's table2

1 It was with a view to remedy this state of things that Akbar introduced his ten years' settlement, the germ of that pernicious measure, Lord Cornwallis's notable Perpetual Settlement. Akbar's intentions were equitable, and, to his perceptions, the enforced pact as between king and subject left little to be objected to; but the uniformity it was desired to promote was dependent upon higher powers, and the Indian climate could not be made a party to the treaty. Hence, in bad seasons, the arrangement worked harshly against the poorer husbandmen, and threw them more and more into the hands of usurers, whose lawful Oriental rate of interest was enough to crush far more thrifty cultivators than the ordinary Indian Raiyat. The ten years' settlement itself was based upon the average returns of the ten preceding harvests, from the fifteenth to the twenty-fourth year (inclusive) of Akbar's reign (Gladwin, i. p. 366).

66

2 No. 5, “ Méwát, not included in Sikandar's revenue roll" (Chronicles, p. 390).

suffices to prove this, and simultaneously with the retention of these State ledgers the interlopers clearly accepted the official method of reckoning in Sikandari Tankahs, which, numismatically speaking, must have been almost the only coins available at the period, the profuse issue of which may be tested by the multitude of the pieces still in existence, and the completeness of the series of dates spreading over twenty-six continuous years of Sikandar's reign, already cited at page 366 of the "Chronicles."

But perhaps the most simple way of reconciling the striking discrepancy between the two sums assigned severally as the Imperial dues under Fírúz and Bábar, would be to suppose that the comparatively large amount of the revenue of the former monarch comprehended within its terms income from all sources, while the reduced estimate of Bábar's chronicler may be held to refer to the State demand upon the land alone, which the conqueror was able directly to enforce from the recorded assessments of the previous reign. The incidental statements of Fírúz Sháh's special biographer, quoted at p. 272, give countenance to such an inference, especially in the item of the £300,000 of vexatious taxes abandoned by Fírúz in A.H. 777 (A.D. 1375-6),1 and the general terms in which the total income is adverted to.

1 It is seldom we find an Oriental potentate testifying, under his own hand, to the iniquities of no less than twenty-four taxes he had previously tacitly sanctioned, and whose abolition he not only frankly proclaims in his own autobiography, but whose perpetual extinction was supposed to be secured by the display of this same royal manifesto on the surface of the walls of the Mosque he had founded for the good of his own soul, in his new capital on the banks of the Jumna ("Chronicles," p. 289, note 2); and yet so readily did the authorities fall back upon those ancient imposts, that we find many of the same items entered in the new relinquishment of oppressive demands under Akbar (pp. 17-19, infrà). The list of curious cesses given by Fírúz Sháh, so suggestive of a primitive stage of civilization, is here subjoined, together with the far more important declaration,

AKBAR'S REVENUES.

The earliest and probably the most competent and trustworthy author who furnishes any return of Akbar's revenue is Nizám-ud-dín Ahmad, a, so to say, practised accountant,

on the part of the reigning monarch, of the specific taxes he was content to recognize as the Royal demand, in full, against all classes of his subjects.

LIST OF IMPOSTS PROFESSEDLY ABOLISHED BY FÍRÚZ SHAH IN A.D. 1375.

.Market dues مندوي برگ .

2.

3.

Brokerage. (No. 35 of Akbar's list, p. 19.)

Slaughter-houses. (12 jitals for every ox, etc. No. 22 of Akbar's list.)

4. Leaders of music and dancing. (Nautches?)

چنگي غله

7.

Octroi (lit. handfuls of grain taken, in kind, as town dues), a tax still wisely conceded to the home instincts of our native townships in the Punjab. Books.

Indigo. (Dyes, No. 37 ?)

كتابي

.36 .Fish. No ماهي فروشي

.Cotton-cleaning نداني

.Soap-manufacture صابونكري

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

16.

Ghi (clarified butter). (No. 18.)

Ground rent of stalls in the market. ( fold, stratum.)

17. df [da for Chháp, synonymous with Chdnk, a stamp set upon

and a most experienced revenue administrator, who describes a condition of things of which he had the fullest means of official knowledge. I repeat the substance, and enlarge the

TAXES SPECIALLY AUTHORIZED BY FÍRÓZ ON HIS OWN INTERPRETATION OF

2.

3.

4.

; Alms, or a "poor rate, the portion or amount of pro'perty that is given therefrom, as the due of God,

to the poor." Usually assessed at, or 2 per cent. (Lane.)

Capitation tax on Hindús (three grades, @40, 20, and

10 tankahs).

(Res relicta), the Lawáris mál of the present day. The Wala Imámat of the Western interpreters, i.e. "In

heritance of dominion," or heritage of the head of the State.

.of all spoils and produce of mines } خمس غنايم ومعادن: فتوحات فیروز شاهی From the Persian MS

Shams-i-Siráj 'Afíf, Fírúz's especial biographer, also adverts to this abolition of oppressive taxes; he notices as specially objectionable—1st. The system of demanding extra fees, entitled Dángána (or one dáng in the tankah), in addition to the authorized Zakát, exacted on the entry of merchandize into towns. 2nd. The Mushtaghal or Kird-i-zamín, “ ground rent” (?) on the shops and houses of Dehli, which amounted to as much as 1,50,000 tankahs per annum. 3rd. The mentioned in Fírúz Shah's list (No. 3). 4th. The Rozi, or one day's labour exacted by the officials from every beast of burden entering the town with merchandize. The author concludes by noticing that this edict of Fírúz Shah's was proclaimed in his presence, in a.í. 777, and that the consequent loss to the State was estimated at 30,00,000 tankahs (£300,000). See Professor Dowson's translation, Elliot's Historians, iii. pp. 363–6, 377; Briggs's Ferishtah, i. p. 463; Ferishtah, Bombay Persian text, i. p. 272.

روزي

1 See "Chronicles," p. 388. This is not the place to enlarge upon the merits of the author of the Tabakát-i Akbari (otherwise known as the Táríkh-i Nizami). Suffice it to say, that Nizám-ud-din Ahmad, with his father's rank to recommend