Theme

8
Peasants, Zamindars and The State
► Introduction
Fastrack Revision
➤ During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries about
85 per cent 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.
➤ This created relationships of co-operation, competition
and conflict among them. The sum of these agrarian
relationships made up rural society.
> 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.
➤ Agents of the state revenue assessors, collectors,
record keepers - sought to control rural society so as
to ensure that cultivation took place and the state got
its regular share of taxes from the produce.
▸ Peasants and Agricultural 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
➤ But rural India was not characterised by settled peasant
production alone.
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 expenses of land.
► Sources of Information
➤ The understanding of the workings of rural society
does not come from those who worked the land, as
peasants did not write about themselves.
➤ The major source for the agrarian history of the
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries are
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. This text meticulously 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.
➤ 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.
> Any revolt or assertion of autonomous power against
the Mughal state was, in the eyes of the author of the
Ain, predestined to fail. In other words, whatever we
learn from the Ain about peasants remains a view from
the top.
The account of the Ain can be supplemented by
descriptions contained in sources emanating from
regions away from the Mughal capital.
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 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.
► Peasants and their Lands
➤ The term which Indo-Persian sources of the Mughal
period most frequently used to denote a peasant was
raiyat (plural, riaya) or muzarian.
➤ In addition, we also encounter the terms kisan or asami.
Sources of the seventeenth century refer to two kinds
of peasants-khud-kashta and pahi-kashta.
➤ The farmer were residents of the village in which
they held their lands. The latter were non-resident
cultivators who belonged to some other village, but
cultivated lands elsewhere on a contractual basis.
➤ 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 for
example, forced by economic distress after a famine.
➤ 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.
➤ 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.
▸ Irrigation and Technology
The abundance of land, available labour and the
mobility of peasants were three factors that accounted
for the constant expansion of agriculture.
➤ 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.
➤ 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.
➤Though agriculture was labour intensive, peasants did
use technologies that often harnessed cattle energy.
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 glant 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
➤ Agriculture was organised around two major seasonal
cycles, the kharif (autumn) and the rabi (spring).
This would mean that most regions, except those
terrains that were the most arid or inhospitable,
produced a minimum of two crops a year (do-fasla).
➤ Some areas where rainfall or irrigation assured a
continuous supply of water, even gave three crops. This
ensured an enormous variety of produce. For instance,
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.
The Mughal state also encouraged peasants to
cultivate such crops as they brought in more revenue.
Crops such as cotton and sugarcane were jins-l kamil
par excellence.
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
(for example, mustard) and lentils. This shows how
subsistence and commercial production were closely
intertwined in an average peasant's holding.
➤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.
▸ Agricultural Prosperity and Population Growth
➤ One important outcome of such varied and flexible
forms of agricultural production was a slow
demographic growth.
➤ Despite periodic disruptions caused by famines and
epidemics, India's population increased, according to
calculations by economic historians, by about 50 million
people between 1600 and 1800, which is an increase of
about 33 per cent over 200 years.
►The Village Community
➤ The Peasants were mostly involved in the agricultural
production. Peasants held their lands in individual
ownership.
➤ At the same time, they belonged to a collective village
community as far as many aspects of their social
existence were concerned.
This village community has three parts i.e. the
cultivators, the panchayat and the village headmen
(muqaddam or mandal).
▸ Caste and the Rural Milieu
The cultivators were a highly heterogeneous group
because of deep inequalities based on caste and other
caste-like distinctions. Among those who tilled the
land, there was a large number who worked as menials
or agricultural labourers (majur).
➤ There was availability of large amount of cultivable
land. Certain caste groups were assigned menial tasks,
thus they faced poverty. Such groups comprised a large
section of the village population, had least resources
and were forced by their position in the caste hierarchy,
for example, Dalits of modern India.
➤ Such distinctions had begun spreading into other
communities also. In Muslim communities, menials
(low status) like the halalkhoran (scavengers) were
made to stay outside the boundaries of the village.
Similarly, the mallahzadas (sons of boatmen) in Bihar
were comparable to slaves.
➤ According to a manual belonging to seventeenth
century Marwar, Rajputs are mentioned as peasants,
sharing the same space with Jats, who were given a
lower status in the caste hierarchy.
➤ The Gauravas, who cultivated land around Vrindavan
(Uttar Pradesh), wanted Rajput status. Castes like
Ahirs, Gujars and Malis moved to higher positions 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 Kalvartas acquired
the status of peasants.
► Panchayats and Headmen
The village panchayat was an assembly of elders,
usually important people of the village with hereditary
rights over their property.
➤ The panchayat was a mixed body in the villages which
had mixed caste populations. The decisions made by
these panchayats were binding on the members.
➤ The headmen was chosen through the consensus of
the village elders and this choice had to be ratified by
the zamindar.
➤ Headmen held office as long as they enjoyed the
confidence of the village elders. He could be dismissed
by them also.
➤ The main function of the headman was to look after
the preparation of village accounts. He was assisted by
the accountant or patwari of the panchayat.
➤ The panchayat got its funds from the contributions
made by the individuals to a common financial
pool. These funds were used to pay for the costs of
entertaining revenue officials who visited the village
from time-to-time.
➤ Other expenses for community welfare activities
like overcoming the difficulties faced by the natural
calamities like floods, were also met from these funds.
➤ These funds were also used for construction of a bund
or digging a canal which peasants usually could not
afford to do on their own.
➤ One of the important functions of the panchayat was
to ensure that the caste boundaries among the various
communities residing in the village were maintained. In
Eastern India, all marriages were held in the presence
of the Mandal
➤ The duties of the village headmen was to oversee the
conduct of the members of the village community and
to prevent any offence against their caste.
➤ Panchayats had the authority to levy fines and
impose serious punishments like expulsion from the
community.
➤ Expulsion meant that the person who was given
punishment was forced to leave the village, become an
outcaste and lose his right to practice his profession.
Such a measure was intended as a restraint to violation
of caste norms.
➤ Petitions were made collectively by a caste group or a
community protesting against what they considered
were morally illegitimate demands on the part of elite
groups. For instance, excessive tax demands in times of
drought or other disasters.
➤ For the petitioners, the right to the basic minimum for
survival was sanctioned by the custom. They regarded
the village panchayats as the court of appeal that would
ensure that the state carried out its moral obligations
and guaranteed justice.
➤In Western India (especially Maharashtra) petitions
were presented to the panchayat complaining about
taxation or the demand for unpaid labour (begar)
imposed by the 'Superior' castes or officials of the
state. These petitions were usually made by villagers,
from the lowest ranks of rural society.
The decision of the panchayat in conflicts between
lower-caste and the state officials or the local zamindar
could vary from case-to-case. In case of excessive
revenue demands, the panchayat often suggested
compromise.
➤ In cases where reconciliation failed, peasants took
recourse to more extreme forms of resistance like
deserting the village. The relatively easy availability
of uncultivated land and the competition over labour
resources made this an effective weapon in the hands
of cultivators.
In addition to the village panchayat each caste or jati
in the village had its own jati panchayat. They also had
considerable power in the rural society.
➤In Rajasthan, jati panchayats settled civil disputes
between members of different castes. Jati panchayats
mediated in land disputes like
• When different persons claiming same piece of
land,
• When deciding whether marriages were performed
according to the rules laid down by a particular caste
group,
When determined who had more religious
importance in village functions, etc.
• State respected the decisions of jati panchayats in
most cases, except in the matters of criminal justice.
▸ Village Artisans
➤ One of the interesting aspects of the village was the
relationship of exchange between different producers.
➤ According to Marathi documents and village surveys
made in the early years of British rule, there existed a
huge numbers of artisans, sometimes as high as 25 per
cent of the total households in the villages.
➤Sometimes the difference between artisans and
peasants in village society was not fixed because many
groups performed the tasks of both.
➤ Cultivators and their families would also participate
in craft production like dyeing, textile printing, baking
and firing of pottery, making and repairing agricultural
implements.
➤ Cultivators engaged in artisanal production when
there was a gap in between agricultural activities, like
the period between sowing and weeding or between
weeding and harvesting.
➤ Village artisans like potters, blacksmiths, carpenters,
barbers, even goldsmiths provided specialised services
and in return they were paid by villagers by different
means.
➤ The most common way of paying was giving them
a share of the harvest, or an allotment of land.
In Maharashtra such lands on which artisans had
hereditary holding were called miras or watan.
► Villages as a Little Republic
➤In the nineteenth century, some British officials
viewed village as a little republic made up of people
with common interests sharing resources and labour in
collective. But this was not a symbol of rural equality.
➤ Individual ownership of assets and deep inequities
based on caste and gender differences were present
in villages. A group of powerful individuals dictated the
affairs of the village and exploited the weaker sections.
They also had the authority to deliver justice.
➤ A cash nexus had already developed through trade
between villages and towns. In the Mughal heartland
(the central part of a country), revenue was assessed
and collected in cash.
➤ Artisans producing for the export market received
their advances or wages in cash, as did producers of
commercial products like cotton, silk or indigo.
► Women in Agrarian Society
➤In many different societies, the production process
often involves men and women performing certain
specified roles. In the contexts that we are exploring,
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.
➤ With the growth of nucleated villages and expansion
in individual peasant farming, which characterised
medieval Indian agriculture the basis of production
was the labour and resources of the entire household.
➤ Menstruating women, for instance, 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 of women's labour to produce it. In fact,
peasant and artisan women worked not only in the
fields, but even went to the houses of their employers
or to the markets if necessary.
➤ Women were considered an important resource in
agrarian society also because they were child bearers
in a society dependent on labour.
➤ At the same time, high mortality rates among women
- owing to malnutrition, frequent pregnancies, death
during childbirth - often meant a shortage of wives.
➤ 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.
➤ According to established social norms, 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.
➤ Documents from Western India-Rajasthan, Gujarat and
Maharashtra record petitions sent by women to the
village panchayat, seeking redress and justice. 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.
➤ 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.
➤ 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.
➤Forests and Tribes
➤ Beyond Settled Villages
There was more to rural India than sedentary
agriculture. Apart from the intensively cultivated
provinces in Northern and North-Western India,
huge swathes of forests - dense forest (Jangal) or
scrubland (kharbandi) existed all over Eastern
India, Central India, Northern India (including the
Terai on the Indo-Nepal border), Jharkhand and in
peninsular India down the Western Ghats and the
Deccan plateau.
Though it is nearly impossible to set an all-India
average of the forest cover for this period, informed
conjectures based on contemporary sources suggest
an average of 40 per cent.
Forest dwellers were termed jangli in contemporary
texts. Being jangli, however, did not mean an
absence of 'civilisation', as popular usage of the
term today seems to connote.
The term described those whose livelihood came
from the gathering of forest produce, hunting and
shifting agriculture. These activities were largely
season specific.
Among the Bhils, for example, spring was reserved
for collecting forest produce, summer for fishing,
the monsoon months for cultivation and autumn
and winter for hunting. Such a sequence presumed
and perpetuated mobility, which was a distinctive
feature of tribes inhabiting these forests.
For the state, the forest was a subversive place - a
place of refuge (mawas) for troublemakers. Once
again, we turn to Babur who says that jungles
provided a good defence "behind which the people
of the pargana become stubbornly rebellious and
pay no taxes".
►In Roads into Forests
➤ External forces entered the forest in different ways.
For example, the 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 relate to all
its subjects, rich and poor. Regular hunting expeditions,
enabled the emperor to travel across the territories of
his empire and personally attend to the grievances of
its inhabitants.
➤ The lives of people those who lived in forests was
effected negatively by the external factors like the
spread of commercial agriculture. Forest products like
honey, beeswax and gum lac were in great demand.
➤ In the seventeenth century products like gum lac,
became the important items of overseas export from
India. Elephants were also captured and sold. The state
required elephants for the army.
Barter system was also used in trade by exchanging
commodities. Some tribes like Lohanis in the Punjab
were involved in overland trade, between India and
Afghanistan. They also traded in the town-country
trade in Punjab itself.
➤ The lives of forest people were also manipulated and
changed by the social factors. Tribes had their chieftains
just like the 'big men' of the village community.
➤ Many tribal chiefs had become zamindars and some
even became kings. They had to build an army for this
and thus they recruited people from their relatives or
demanded that their brotherhood i.e., people of their
tribes provide military service.
Tribes in the Sind region had armies which were
comprised of 6000 cavalry and 7000 infantry. Ahom
kings in Assam had palks, people who provide military
service in exchange for land. The Ahom kings declared
a royal monopoly (ownership) over the capture of wild
elephants.
➤ In the sixteenth century, transition from a tribal to a
monarchical system became fully developed though it
had started earlier.
➤ This could be seen from the Ain-i Akbari's observations
on the existence of tribal kingdoms in the North-East.
➤ War was a common occurrence, for example, the Koch
kings fought and brought a number of neighbouring
tribes under control, after a long series of wars through
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
➤ New cultural influences also began to penetrate into
forested zones. Some historians have suggested
that sufisaints (pirs) played a major role in the slow
acceptance of Islam among agricultural communities
emerging in newly colonised places.
▸ The Zamindars
➤ Zamindars were class of people in the countryside who
lived on agriculture but did not participate directly in
the processes of agricultural production.
➤ Zamindars were holders of property in the form of land
and also enjoyed the social and economic privileges by
quality of their superior status in rural society.
The two main reasons for the elevated status of
zamindars were caste and certain services (khidmat)
that they provided for the state. The zamindars held
large areas of personal lands known as milkiyat,
(property).
Knowledge BOOSTER
During the Mughal Empire, Zamindar belonged to
the nobility and formed the ruling class.
➤ Milkiyat lands were cultivated for the private use of
zamindars, often with the help of hired or slave labour.
The zamindars could sell, leave or mortgage these
lands at their will.
➤ Zamindars often collect revenue on behalf of the state
and they also controlled military resources which were
their sources of power.
➤ Abul Fazl's account indicates that an 'upper caste'
Brahmana-Rajput combine had already established
Firm control over rural society. It reflected a fairly large
representation from the so-called intermediate castes.
➤ Contemporary documents show that some people
became zamindars by the means of military force. The
action of depriving weaker people's land or property
by a powerful military chieftain was quite often a way
of expanding a zamindari. This kind of aggression from
zamindar was possible only if he was authorised by an
imperial order (sanad).
➤ The slow processes of zamindari unification also helped
in birth of new zamindars. These involved colonisation
of new lands, by transfer of rights, by order of the state
and by purchase.
➤ Other factors also allowed the consolidation of clan or
lineage based zamindaris. For example, the Rajputs
and Jats adopted these strategies to centralise their
control over large parts of territory in Northern India.
➤ Similarly, peasant-pastoralists like the Sadgops created
powerful zamindaris in areas of central and South-
Western Bengal.
➤ Zamindars led the process of colonisation of
agricultural land and helped cultivators to settle down
by providing them the means of cultivation, like cash
loans. The buying and selling of zamindaris increased
the process of monetisation in the village side.
➤ Zamindars also sold the produce from their milkiyat
lands. They often established markets (haats) to which
peasants also came to sell their produce.
➤ Zamindar's relationship with the peasantry had an
element of mutual benefit, authority and subordinate
relation and patronage. This view can be supported by
two aspects:
(i) Bhakti saints who
fearlessly condemned
caste-based and other
forms of oppression did
not show the zamindars
or moneylender as
exploiters or oppressors
of the peasantry. They
criticised the revenue
official of the state.
►Land Revenue System
(ii) Zamindars were often
supported by the
peasantry in their
struggle against the
state in the large
number of agrarian
revolts that arose in
North India.
➤ Revenue from the land was the economic mainstay of
the Mughal Empire. It was therefore vital for the state
to create an administrative apparatus to ensure control
over agricultural production, 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. Thus revenue officials and
record keepers penetrated the agricultural domain and
became a decisive agent in shaping agrarian relations.
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. In his list of duties of the
amil-guzar or revenue collector, Akbar decreed that
while 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. The scope of actually realising
these claims was, however, sometimes thwarted by
local conditions.
➤Both cultivated and cultivable lands were measured
in each province. The Ain compiled the aggregates
of such lands during Akbar's rule. Efforts to measure
lands continued under subsequent emperors.
➤ In 1665, Aurangzeb expressly instructed his revenue
officials to prepare annual records of the number
of cultivators in each village. Yet not all areas were
measured successfully. As we have seen, forests
covered huge areas of the subcontinent and thus
remained unmeasured.
• 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
➤ The Mughal Empire was among the large territorial
empires in Asia that had managed to consolidate power
and resources during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.
➤ These empires were the Ming (China), Safavid (Iran)
and Ottoman (Turkey). The political stability achieved
by all these empires helped create vibrant networks of
overland trade from China to the Mediterranean Sea.
➤ Voyages of discovery and the opening up of the
New World resulted in a massive expansion of Asia's
(particularly India's) trade with Europe. This resulted
in a greater geographical diversity of India's overseas
trade as well as an expansion in the commodity
composition of this trade.
➤ 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.
➤ The testimony of an Italian traveller, Giovanni Careri,
who passed through India c. 1690, provides a graphic
account about the way silver travelled across the globe
to reach India. It also gives us an idea of the phenomenal
amounts of cash and commodity transactions in
seventeenth-century India.
►The Ain-i-Akbari of Abu'l Fazl Allahi
➤ The Ain-l-Akbari was the collection of a large historical,
administrative project of classification. It was
undertaken by Abu'l Fazl at the order of Emperor
Akbar, which was completed in 1598.
➤ The Ain-l-Akbari was part of a larger project of history
writing commissioned by Akbar, which was known as
the Akbar Nama. Akbar Nama is consisted of three
books.
➤ The first two provided a historical narrative and the
Ain-i-Akbari and the third book was organised as a
collection of imperial regulations and a gazetteer of
the empire.
The Ain-l-Akbari gave detailed accounts of the
organisation of the court, administration and army,
the sources of revenue, the physical layout of the
provinces of Akbar's empire and the literary, cultural
and religious traditions of the people.
➤ It also gave the description of the various departments
of Akbar's government and detailed descriptions of
the various provinces (subas) of the empire.
➤It informed the emperor about the different and
diverse customs and practices that existed across his
large empire in different regions.
➤ The Ain-i-Akbari recorded information about the
empire and the people of India, and thus introduced
a standard of reference for studying India during the
seventeenth century.
➤ The Ain-i-Akbari was made up of five books (daftars),
out of which the first three books describe the
administration, which are given below:
• Manzil-abadi was the first book which was
concerned about the imperial household and its
maintenance.
• Stpan-abadi was the second book, which covers
the military and civil administration and the
establishment of servants. It also included notices
and short biographical sketches of imperial officials
(mansabdars), learned men, poets and artists.
• Mulk-abadi was the third book which dealt with
the fiscal side of the empire and provides rich
quantitative information on revenue rates, followed
by the 'Account of the Twelve Provinces'. This
section has detailed statistical information, which
includes the geographic, topographic and economic
profile of all subas and their administrative and
fiscal divisions (sarkars, parganas and mahals), total
measured area and assessed revenue (Jama). The
mulk-abadi gave a fascinating, detailed and highly
complex view of agrarian society in Northern-India.