Chapter III: The Consuming Classes

I. The Court and the Imperial Service

FROM the working of the administration we pass to consider the economic position of the men by whom it was conducted, the first class of those into which the population of India has been divided for the purpose of this study. The inclusion in a single class of courtiers and officials may excite surprise, but in India at this period no valid distinction can be drawn. Men came to Court in search of a career, or at the least a livelihood; if the search was unsuccessful, they withdrew, while success meant the attainment of military rank, adminis- trative functions, and remuneration, sometimes in the form of a cash salary, and sometimes by the grant of the whole or a portion of the revenue yielded by a particular area. There was no independent aristocracy, for independence was synonymous with rebellion, and a noble was either a servant or an enemy of the ruling power. The present section will deal with the position of those high officials who had a recog- nised standing at Court, leaving for subsequent consideration the minor functionaries, both civil and military, who may be regarded as officials pure and simple.

In regard to these high officials, something very like uni- formity appears to have prevailed throughout India. De- scriptions of Vijayanagar in the first half of the sixteenth century show us the Emperor surrounded by a body of nobles, who occupied the principal posts in the administration, governed portions of the Empire, retained a large part of the revenue of their charges, and were liable to maintain a military force of a prescribed size and composition ; accounts of the Deccan kingdoms in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries give glimpses of practically the same arrangements, while we have full details of the corresponding organisation maintained by Akbar. We are justified therefore in regarding this as the typical Indian system of the period, and it will be sufficient for the present purpose if we study it in detail for the Mogul Empire, regarding which our information is almost complete. A few illustrations may, however, be given of the positions held by the nobles in Vijayanagar, as described by Nuniz about the year 1535. The Emperor’s Chief Minister then governed the Coromandel coast, Negapatam, Tanjore, and other districts, from which, after paying the share claimed by the treasury, he was supposed to draw annually 733,000 gold pardaos, or say 20 lakhs of rupees;¹ out of this sum he had to maintain a force of 30,000 infantry and 3000 cavalry, but the chronicler mentions that he econo- mised in this direction. Similarly the Keeper of the Jewels, who had charge of an extensive area in the Deccan, retained nominally 200,000 gold pardaos, and was responsible for 12,600 men, while a former Minister, who held the country about Udaigiri, had 500,000 gold pardaos and a force of 26,500. The significance of these figures depends on the cost of maintaining the troops ; precise data on this point are not available, but a rough estimate suggests that on paper the surplus left to the nobles was not very great, perhaps two or three lakhs of rupees annually for the Minister, and lesser sums for the other nobles. In all probability, however, their real income depended largely on two sources, what they could save on their troops, and what they could collect in addition to the nominal revenue of their districts : there is good evidence that both these sources were important, and it is reasonable to conclude that able and unscrupulous men were about as well off in Southern India as Akbar’s nobles were in the North. It is true that these accounts relate to the period before the battle of Talikot, but the permanent effect of that disaster on the income of the nobles was probably not great,^1 and the incidental pictures furnished by the Jesuit mission- aries of the life at the end of the century leave an impression of wealth and profusion similar to what we shall find in those parts of India where the evidence is more detailed.

When we turn to Northern India, we are struck by the minuteness of the organisation maintained by Akbar. All the great men of the Empire were graded in what may fairly be regarded as an Imperial Service, the conditions of which were laid down by the Emperor in great detail, but the Service differed in essentials from the types familiar in India at the present day, and for that reason its structure is at first sight a little difficult to understand. A person ad- mitted to this Service was appointed to a rank (mansab) as commander of a certain number of cavalry : he had thereupon to enrol and produce the men and horses corre- sponding to his command, and on producing them he became entitled to draw the salary of his rank. The force for which he was thus made responsible was usually less in number than his title indicated ; a commander of 1000 for instance was not required to maintain a body of 1000 cavalry out of his official salary, but some lesser number, which seems to have been gradually reduced as time went on. In the middle of Akbar’s reign the highest ordinary rank was commander of 5000, but the Imperial princes might hold higher positions, and when the Ain-i Akbari was compiled Prince Salim, after- wards Jahangir, stood at the head of the list as commander of 10,000 ; the limit of 5000 was relaxed towards the close of Akbar’s reign, and under his successors subjects could rise to considerably higher positions. From the lowest rank, that of commander of 10, up to the rank of 400, a commander was known as mansabdār, from 500 to 2500 as Amīr,^2 and from 3000 upwards as Amīr-i-Azam or Umda. Apart from the force appropriate to his personal rank, an officer might be permitted to maintain an additional force known as suwār. This was a privilege: the pay of the additional force was drawn from the treasury, the commander was allowed to retain 5 per cent of the pay-bill, and probably had various other perquisites, while his own salary varied to some extent with the strength of his additional force.

I have spoken of the salaries of the various ranks as if they were fixed sums, and in fact they are so stated by Abul Fazl, but it is difficult to ascertain even approximately the amount which can be regarded as the net income of officers holding any particular rank. The following table shows the sanctioned monthly salaries of a few grades; the figures are in the rupees of Akbar’s time, and as explained in the last chapter must be multiplied by five or six in order to obtain the equivalent purchasing power in Northern India at the standard of the present day.

Monthly Salary

In order to get an idea of the income represented by these salaries, we have firstly to deduct the cost of maintaining the force appropriate to an officer’s personal rank. I have shown this cost in the last column of the table, calculated on the monthly expenditure allowed for similar forces on the Imperial establishment, but we may be confident that these figures are maxima, and that a competent officer could maintain, or appear to maintain, his force for a substantially smaller sum. Early in Akbar’s reign there were very great irregularities in this matter : Badaoni gives a pungent account of the mal-practices in vogue, and his statements are in substance con-firmed by the more discreet phrases used by Abul Fazl. Akbar introduced various regulations to secure that the prescribed forces should be in fact maintained, but it would probably be a mistake to assume that his success was com-plete, and we may take it that the actual cost was less than that shown in the table. Secondly, we have to consider the manner in which these salaries were paid. The traditional practice of the country was to pay by way of jāgīr, that is to say, an officer was granted the revenue of a village or group of villages, or of a pargana, or some larger area, calculated to yield him the sanctioned salary. Like other financial reformers, Akbar disliked this system, and endeavoured to introduce cash payments in its place ; I doubt whether he was ever entirely successful, and in any case the jāgīr system quickly regained its lost ground under Jahangir. Cash pay-ments were unpopular with the Service largely because of the delays of the treasury ; an officer felt greater certainty when in possession of a jāgīr, and he could often hope to obtain one which was really worth, or which could be made to yield, more than the official records showed. There was in fact no small amount of fraud in connection with these allotments, and from a financial point of view, Akbar was undoubtedly right in objecting to the whole system.¹ So far, however, as the officers of his period were concerned, we may fairly say that they could expect to receive at least the salaries recorded by Abul Fazl,¹ while those of them who had secured profitable jāgīrs might hope for something more ; on the other hand, their troops probably cost less than the estimates I have given, and consequently their net incomes were greater than the figures suggest.

Bearing these uncertainties in mind, we can attempt to form a rough idea of the incomes enjoyed by officers of various classes. A commander of 5000 could count on at least Rs. 18,000 a month, and he might be able to increase this sum by judicious economies in his military expenditure, or as the result of good fortune in securing a profitable jāgīr ; this income would enable him to purchase about as much as a monthly income of a lakh would have bought in the years before 1914, and he was thus very much more highly paid than any officer now employed in India. A commander of 1000 could similarly count on receiving Rs. 5000 a month, equal to from Rs. 25,000 to Rs. 30,000 in 1914, or say three times the pay of a modern Lieutenant-Governor, while a commander of 500 would have received the equivalent of Rs. 5000 to Rs. 6000 at the present day. While therefore the precise figures are uncertain, it appears to be reasonable to conclude that the higher ranks of the Imperial Service were remunerated on a scale far more liberal than that which now prevails in India, or for that matter in any portion of the world : certainly there was at the time no other career in India which could offer the prospect of such prizes, and we need not wonder that the Service should have attracted to the Court the ablest and most enterprising men from a large portion of Western Asia.

Appointments to the Service were made by the Emperor personally, the rank being fixed in accordance with the circumstances of each case; Raja Behari Mal, for instance, was appointed direct to the rank of 5000, the highest position open to any one outside the Imperial family. In ordinary cases, however, a candidate had to find a patron who would introduce him to the Emperor, and if he won favour, his appointment followed after a somewhat lengthy series of formalities. There appears to have been no recognised test of fitness, certainly nothing in any way corresponding to the modern usage of requiring some evidence of educational or other qualifications; Akbar had great faith in his own powers of discerning character, and he appears to have acted uni- formly on his own judgment. In the same way there were no rules regarding promotion; an officer might be advanced, or degraded, or dismissed at the Emperor’s pleasure.

The Service was not by any means confined to men of Indian nationality, and in Akbar’s time it was predominantly foreign. Akbar himself was a foreigner in India; his father entered the country as a conqueror, and his adherents came from beyond the frontiers. Writing in the middle of the seventeenth century, Bernier insisted that the Mogul was even then a foreigner in Hindustan, and he states that “the Omrahs consist mostly of adventurers from different nations who entice one another to Court.” The approximate com- position of the Service under Akbar can be ascertained from Blochmann’s laborious notes to the lists of amirs and mansab- dars given by Abul Fazl; these lists include all appointments made during the reign to ranks above 500, and also those holders of inferior rank who were alive when the Ain was compiled about 1595. Omitting a small number of officers whose origin is not on record, I find that just under 70 per cent of the remainder belonged to families which had either come to India with Humayun, or had arrived at Court after the accession of Akbar; the remaining 30 per cent of the ap- pointments were held by Indians, rather more than half by Moslems and rather less than half by Hindus. Akbar has often been praised for the enlightened policy which offered such scope for advancement to his Hindu subjects, and the praise is deserved, provided that proper stress is laid on the element of policy. In the course of about forty years he appointed in all twenty-one Hindus to ranks above 500, but of these, seventeen were Rajputs, that is to say, the great majority of the appointments were made in order to consolidate his hold over the chiefs who submitted to his rule. Of the remaining four appointments, one was held by Raja Birbal, the Court wit, the second by Raja Todar Mal, the great revenue adminis- trator, the third by his son, and the fourth by another khattari, whose origin is not recorded, but who may be assumed to have been brought in by Todar Mal. In the lower ranks there were thirty-seven Hindus, of whom thirty were Rajputs. While, therefore, it is true that the Service offered a career to Hindus, it is also true that in practice the career was limited to Rajputs, apart from a few very exceptional cases drawn from other castes. The entire list contains only two brah- mans for the whole Empire; one was Birbal, the other was Birbal’s spendthrift son. The Imperial Service in fact con- sisted in the higher ranks of foreigners, Moslems, Rajputs, Birbal, and Todar Mal.

The primary duty assigned to the Service was simply to obey the Emperor’s orders, though officers in the junior ranks were commonly placed under the orders of a senior. Two lists of officers were kept, one of those in attendance, the other of those holding appointments. Officers on the first list had nothing to do beyond appearing regularly at Court, maintaining their military force, and being ready to carry out any order which the Emperor might give. The appointments held by those on the second list were of very various kinds; they might be employed on strictly military duties, they might hold governorships or other posts in the provinces, or they might be attached to one of the departments of the Imperial Household, in the band, III THE CONSUMING CLASSES 71

or the stables, or the fruitery as the case might be. There was very little specialisation of appointments, and an officer might be transferred at a moment’s notice to an entirely novel form of employment: Birbal, after many years at Court, met his death in command of troops on the Frontier, while Abul Fazl, the most eminent literary man of the time, did excellent service when sent to conduct military operations in the Deccan. The whole Service was directly under Akbar’s orders, and he chose from it the officers whom he considered best suited for the work of the moment; the success of his administration on these lines is the best evidence of his power of judging men.

A general view of the prospects of Akbar’s Imperial Service suggests a comparison with the Bar rather than State employ- ment at the present day. There was nothing approaching to the orderly promotion which is now so familiar; there were huge prizes to be won, but there were also many blanks in the lottery. It must have been very difficult to make a start, and from a subordinate position attract the favourable notice of the Emperor, but the start once made promotion might be rapid, and success could be commanded by the exercise of the indispensable qualities. The biographical notices collected by Blochmann, to which reference has already been made, afford instances of the possibilities which Akbar’s Service offered. Hakim Ali, for instance, came from Persia to India poor and destitute, but won Akbar’s favour, and from being his personal servant rose to the rank of 2000. Peshrau Khan again was a slave who was given to Humayun as a present ; he rendered service in many different capacities and died a commander of 2000, leaving a fortune of 15 lakhs (equivalent to nearly a crore of rupees at modern values). The Service was undoubtedly by far the most attractive career in India, but at the same time it had its drawbacks. The Emperor was heir to his officers, and neither rank nor fortune could be passed on ; the most that could be hoped for was that enough would be left for the maintenance of the family, and that the sons would be given a start in considera- tion of the father’s services. Some officers may have accumulated secret hoards to meet this and other emergencies, but at any rate it was impossible to establish a family in a position of open independence, and each generation had practically to start afresh. The expenses of keeping up appearances and living in accordance with the fashionable standard were very great, as we shall see later on; payments were irregular, jāgīrs might almost be termed a gamble, and there was every possible inducement to take advantage of any momentary prosperity, and get together a sum of money which would tide over evil days or perhaps purchase the favour of men of influence and authority. Money spent on bribes and presents might prove a most profitable investment; money saved was money wasted, unless it could be concealed from the know-ledge of the world.

I have tried to indicate the position of Akbar’s high officers in some detail. My reason for dwelling on it is that these officers administered the Empire, and that the fortunes of the masses of the people were in their hands. The questions of real economic importance regarding the great men of the Empire, and indeed of India taken as a whole, concern the many rather than the few. What qualities were brought out among the successful officers by the system which has been described? Could it be counted on to produce administrators who would have the good of the people at heart, or did it tend to equip the country with exploiters rather than cherishers of the poor? On these questions the verdict must I think be unfavourable. The student of the chronicles of the time, while he recognises that some rulers watched for and rewarded honest work, must also recognise that honest work was not the only, or the easiest, road to preferment. In order to rise, an officer needed readiness of speech, plausibility, and the capacity for carrying on, or at least withstanding intrigue, and Akbar, like other rulers, was surrounded by men of this type. They preferred to remain at Court, and a province or a jāgīr served mainly to replenish their resources; they were less concerned to promote the prosperity of their charges than to keep things quiet, to see that complaints did not reach the Emperor’s ears, and meanwhile to amass, or to spend, as much wealth as could be collected under these conditions. Making every allowance for Akbar’s gift of discernment, it cannot have operated for long enough to work any permanent altera- tion, and there is abundant evidence that under his successor things got rapidly worse; Jahangir believed in frequent transfers, and the certainty of a speedy change meant in- creased activity in exploitation. But even in Akbar’s time I find it impossible to believe that officers of the type best adapted to the environment were likely to carry out any steady policy of development such as the condition of the people rendered desirable. Akbar recognised the need for such a policy, mainly I take it on financial grounds, but his regula- tions to secure its realisation are remarkable for their vague- ness, and the single instance of definite action furnished by the appointment of the Karoris¹ is also the most conspicuous of his administrative failures. Probably the most that the peasants could hope was that their Governor would leave them to themselves, and not exploit them more than his predecessor had done, but it is impossible to gather from the records whether this hope was often realised.

II. OTHER FORMS OF STATE EMPLOYMENT

The remaining forms of State employment require perhaps less detailed notice, for while in the aggregate they furnished the livelihood of a large section of the people, they were of comparatively slight importance for the economic welfare of the country as a whole. It now becomes possible to draw a distinction, though not an absolutely clear distinction, between military and civilian employment, and under the former head the class which calls for the earliest mention is the body of gentlemen-at-arms known as the Ahadis, which was a distinctive feature of Akbar’s organisation. In the Mogul Empire a young man of position, who for any reason was unable to secure a mansab, might still hope to be ap- pointed Ahadi, becoming one of “the immediate servants” of the Emperor, and from this position he might hope to be promoted to a mansab later on. Ahadis were em- ployed on a great variety of work; some of them per- formed duties analogous to those of a modern aide-de-camp or King’s Messenger, while others were appointed to positions of trust in the Household departments, as guards over the harem, or with the camp, in the fruitery, or the library, and so on. Their pay was substantially higher than that of ordinary troopers, and Abul Fazl says that many of them received more than Rs. 500 a month ; their salaries were paid for nine and a half months in the year, the remainder being set off against the cost of horses and equipment, and they received special consideration in various ways. Their im- portance from the economic point of view is not great ; the position offered the beginning of a career to men who could not make a better start, but patronage was necessary to secure appointment, and it may fairly be assumed that Ahadis were chosen mainly from the same classes as the mansabdārs.

In considering the economic importance of the bulk of the Mogul army, I think it is safe to leave out of account the four millions of infantry included in the būmī or local forces. Abul Fazl says only that these forces were furnished by the zamindars of the country, and I can find no suggestion in the authorities that the men received pay, or that they were withdrawn from production by being called up for any regular training. In the literature of the time the word foot-soldier has a very wide meaning, and covers both fighting men and the camp-followers who were employed in enormous numbers : the enumeration of these " foot-soldiers " in the Ain means, I take it, that the local authorities might be required in case of need to produce the prescribed number of men, in other words, that the peasantry of a particular area might be im- pressed temporarily when military operations were in progress in that part of the Empire. The position of the local cavalry was probably more regular ; their distribution over the provinces corresponds roughly with the importance of zamin- dars, and it may be inferred that the forces enumerated under this head were of substantial military value, consisting of troops maintained by zamindars at their own cost, but liable to be called on by the Emperor in case of need.¹ Possibly the whole number was not permanently maintained, but the force represents a withdrawal from production of a substantial number of men.

Apart from these local forces, we have to take into account the comparatively small number of troops maintained by the Emperor himself, and the much larger number maintained by his officers, partly at their own cost and partly paid for by the Imperial treasury. We know the sanctioned pay of the troops paid by the State, and we may assume that the officers got their men at rather cheaper rates. The pay of mounted men included the cost of maintaining their equipment and horses; deducting this item, the monthly pay of a trooper owning a single horse was on paper about 7 or 8 rupees, though it might be as much as 13 rupees if he owned an imported animal, but various deductions and frequent fines would operate to reduce these figures considerably. In the artillery, which was entirely Imperial, and was administered as a department of the Household, and not of the Army, the pay ranged from about 7 to 3 rupees. The infantry may fairly be described as a miscellaneous force; the ranks included matchlock-men (from 3 to 6 rupees monthly), porters ($2\frac{1}{2}$ to 3 rupees), gladiators and wrestlers (from 2 to 15 rupees), and slaves (from a dam to a rupee daily). The significance of these rates will be considered when we come to examine the standard of remuneration in other careers, and for the present it is sufficient to note that the higher pay sanctioned for the cavalry is in part at least an index to a difference in social position; service in the cavalry was respectable, and a gentleman could enter it, but the other branches of the army may almost be classed as menial, though a partial exception may be made of the artillery, in which foreign experts were employed in increasing numbers as time went on.

As has been said in the last chapter, the strength of the Mogul army cannot be calculated with any approach to precision ; the effective cavalry forces may have numbered somewhere about a quarter of a million, while the numbers of the infantry can only be conjectured. The amount of employ- ment provided was, however, substantial. The dismounted ranks were probably recruited from the ordinary classes of peasants and townsmen, but in the cavalry Pathans and Rajputs predominated, apart from the numerous adventurers of foreign origin, and it may be noted that Akbar’s regula- tions gave a substantial preference to foreigners in certain departments.

The armies of Southern India differed from those of the north mainly in the small proportion of cavalry which they contained. The chief reason for this difference was the scarcity of horses ; they were not to any appreciable extent bred in the southern kingdoms, and importation from Arabia and Persia was a costly and risky business, while throughout the sixteenth century the trade was controlled entirely by the Portuguese, who in this way used their predominance at sea to secure a footing in the politics of their neighbours, obtaining various important concessions in return for promises of supply. Horses were in fact a luxury in the south ; in Goa they cost about 500 pardaos (or say 1000 of Akbar’s rupees), and it is significant that Pyrard, who gives this figure, puts the price of a slave-girl at from 20 to 30 pardaos in the same market. Apart from the predominance of infantry, the status of the soldiers appears to have been similar to that of the Mogul army ; I have not found a record of the scale of pay about the year 1600, but half-a-century later Thévenot wrote that the soldiers in Golconda received 2 or 3 rupees monthly, which would leave them rather worse off than the corresponding ranks of Akbar’s troops. It is not to be supposed that the numbers permanently employed in military duties were equal to the war strength of the southern country, which I have calculated at about a million men, but the forces maintained at the end of the sixteenth century must still have been con- siderable ; the Deccan kingdoms had then to face the increas- ing menace of the southward expansion of the Mogul power, while the nobles of Vijayanagar were engaged in strengthening their position, and were occasionally at war among themselves. If then we reckon together the regular forces of the Moguls, the cavalry (but not the infantry) of their local forces, the per- manent troops of the Deccan kingdoms, and those of the nobles of Vijayanagar, it seems reasonable to conclude that the total for the whole of India would at any rate greatly exceed a million of men, or more than double the strength of the various armies maintained about the year 1914. Allowing for the probable increase of population in the interval, the permanent draft on the productive power of the country was thus pro- portionately very much greater at the earlier period than at the later; fewer workers had to supply the needs of more fighters, and the difference appears to be sufficiently great to affect materially the distribution of India’s annual income regarded as a whole.

When we turn from military to civil administration, the first difference to be observed from the conditions of the present day is the absence of specialised departments. We hear of nothing corresponding to the modern educational ¹ or medical services, to the excise department, or (outside the large cities) to the police, nor, it need scarcely be added, was there any organisation for the management of the forests, or the provision of technical assistance for peasants or artisans. Notwithstanding the absence of such careers as these, the amount of employment provided by the civil administration must have been large. In Northern India the various depart- ments of the Household were indeed staffed mainly from the Army, the superior posts being usually held by amirs, mansab- dars, or ahadis, and the rank and file being drawn from the infantry, but there were large clerical establishments at the various administrative headquarters, while the assessment and collection of the revenue required a numerous outdoor staff. Of the offices at headquarters Abul Fazl tells us practically nothing, and since the Ain purports to be a com- plete compilation of Akbar’s administrative orders, we may conclude that he did not alter the organisation of these offices, but maintained the system which he found at work. The employment of a large staff of clerks can, however, be inferred with confidence from Abul Fazl’s description of the course of official procedure, which was exceedingly complex and in- volved much copying and the use of many registers, features which still distinguish the practice of Indian public offices. As an example of the way in which things were done, we may follow the steps required before a newly appointed mansabdar could draw his allowances. The appointment, having been made by the Emperor personally, would first be recorded in the diary, in which all his orders were entered. The diary having been checked and passed, an extract (yāddāsht) of the order was then made, signed by three officials, and handed over to the copying office, where an abridgement (tālīqa) was prepared, signed by four officials, and then sealed by the Ministers of State. The tālīqa then passed to the military office, which called for estimates and descriptive rolls of the troops to be furnished; when these were ready, a statement of salary (sarkhat) was made out, and after being entered in the records of all sections of the office was sent on to the financial department. There an account was drawn up, and a report submitted to the Emperor, and on an allowance being formally sanctioned, a pay-certificate (tālīqa-i tan) was drafted, and passed through the hands of the Finance Minister, the Commander-in-Chief, and the Military Accountant. This last officer prepared the final document, the farmān, which required six signatures from three separate departments, and would at last be accepted by the Treasury as authority for payment of the salary.

This elaborate procedure will remind the reader of the methods of modern Indian public offices at their worst. That it was not confined to the disbursing departments may be gathered from the account of the revenue administration furnished by Abul Fazl, who mentions among other details that the assessment statements, which were prepared twice yearly for every village, were to be sent to Imperial head-quarters as soon as they were ready ; the examination and registration of such a mass of records implies by itself a small army of clerks, apart from those who were required to deal with other branches of the revenue business of the Empire.¹ Nor were these large offices peculiar to the north of India. Pyrard writes enthusiastically of the secretariat maintained by the Zamorin at Calicut. “ I often wondered,” he says, “ to see the great number of men who have no other business and do nothing else all day long but write and register. Their position is very honourable. . . . Some write down the goods which come for the King, others the taxes and tributes paid day by day, others the money for the expenses of the King’s household, others the most noteworthy events from day to day at Court or in the rest of the kingdom, and in short all the news ; for everything is registered, and each has its own place. They register also all strangers who arrive, taking their names, and their country, the time of their arrival, and the object which brings them, as they did in our case ; and it is a surprising thing to see their number, the good order kept among them, and how quickly they write. . . . The King has similar clerks in all the towns, seaports, harbours, and routes of the kingdom ; they correspond with the clerks in the palace, and everything is organised, the former obeying the latter, and also having superiors among themselves. They have the same method of writing and the same organisation all along the Malabar Coast.” In another passage describing the custom-house at Calicut, Pyrard noted that fraud or mistake was rendered difficult by the number of clerks and officials, and that clerks were posted at the very smallest seaports, who spent their whole time making inventories of the goods which were brought. Other travellers, too, give us glimpses of elaborate formalities implying a fully organised administra- tion, and we may conclude that in Akbar’s time, as at the present day, clerical service afforded employment to a sub- stantial proportion of the population of the country, although as it happens we have no information as to the prevailing rates of remuneration or other terms of their engagements.

Apart from the clerical service, a large amount of employ- ment was provided by the methods of assessing and collecting the revenue, and we obtain occasional glimpses of the sub- ordinate executive staff of the Mogul Empire ; I know of no similar information regarding the south, but there also the business of the revenue must have required numerous officials, though in view of the system of administration they were probably servants of the nobles rather than of the central authority.¹ One item of information which has been pre- served relates to the kanungos, who constituted as I under- stand the permanent localised element in the revenue adminis- tration. They were at one time paid from a cess, but Akbar gave them assignments (jāgīr) calculated to yield monthly salaries of from Rs. 20 to Rs. 50, so that allowing for changes in purchasing power they were very much better off than their successors of the present day. Apart from the kanungos, Akbar does not appear to have altered the subordinate organisation brought into existence by Sher Shah, and we meet with the designations of large numbers of officials— shikkdār, amīn, karkūn, munsiff,² etc.—without any details regarding their position. We have more information regard- ing the staff employed in preparing the seasonal crop-statistics, which were an essential feature of the regulation-system of assessment. These statistics were not compiled by the village accountants, who were at this period servants of the village, and not of the State ; season by season the measurers and writers appeared on the scene, and if, as I conjecture, their emoluments were in part at least a charge on the peasants, the burden must have been heavy. Akbar laid down a scale of diet to be provided for the measuring parties, and also fees to be paid in cash, but as the amount of the season’s revenue depended on the records so prepared, it is reasonable to suppose that in practice payments were limited less by any orders than by the appetite of the subordinate officials, and thus the persistent tradition of the country that land-measure- ment means loot may well have its roots in the system of assessment introduced by Sher Shah and elaborated under Akbar by Raja Todar Mal.

No account of our knowledge of the local administrative staff would be complete without a reference to Akbar’s disastrous experiment of appointing Karoris, of which in- cidental mention has already been made. The idea under- lying this experiment was undoubtedly sound ; large portions of the Empire were inadequately cultivated, and since every field brought under the plough meant an almost immediate increase in revenue, it was a reasonable financial measure to appoint what would now be termed Colonisation Officers with the primary duty of fostering the extension of cultivation, although the time-limit of three years assigned for the under- taking indicates a failure to appreciate the difficulty and complexity of the task. The annalists record these appoint- ments under the year 1574, but say nothing as to the result, but the Karoris are nowhere alluded to in the revenue sections of the Ain, and must therefore have disappeared before its compilation. What actually happened is told by Badaoni ; the officers appointed to the post used the opportunity to further their own interests rather than those of the Empire, and the experiment ended in disaster. " A great portion of the country was laid waste through the rapacity of the Karoris, the wives and children of the raiyats were sold and scattered abroad, and everything was thrown into confusion. But the Karoris were brought to account by Raja Todar Mal, and many good men died from the severe beatings which were administered and from the tortures of the rack and pincers. So many died from protracted confinement in the prisons of the revenue authorities that there was no need of the executioner or swordsman, and no one cared to find them graves or grave-clothes.” This account is doubtless highly coloured, as is so much of Badaoni’s work, but the main facts alleged are in themselves probable, and the fact of failure is to my mind established by the entire omission of any reference to the appointments in the historical account of the revenue system given by Abul Fazl; had the measure succeeded, he would certainly have seized the opportunity of attributing its success to the insight of his Imperial Master, but as things turned out the topic was one to be altogether avoided.

At this point we may leave the consideration of the classes who depended on State employment for their livelihood: our knowledge of them is in many respects incomplete, but we know enough to recognise their importance from the economic point of view. The higher ranks, while comparatively few in numbers, controlled the expenditure of a large proportion of the income of the country, and on their attitude depended the welfare of the classes by whom that income was pro- duced. The lower ranks were at least sufficiently numerous to make up in the aggregate a substantial portion of the population; from the economic standpoint they must be regarded as parasites, feeding upon the fruits of the workers’ toil, and, beyond an imperfect and precarious measure of security, contributing nothing to the common stock. In the remaining sections of this chapter we have to consider the other classes to whom the same description may in general be applied.

III. THE PROFESSIONAL AND RELIGIOUS CLASSES

Mention has already been made of the fact that some of the most important modern professions, notably law, education, and journalism, were non-existent in Akbar’s time. There were doubtless learned students of both Moslem and Hindu texts, but there were no advocates or pleaders practising in the courts ; there were teachers, but the profession had not yet been separated off from more definitely religious pursuits ; while ignorance of the art of printing would suffice to account for the absence of journalists even if other conditions had been favourable to their appearance.¹ Following the Ain-i Akbari, we may describe the established professions as medicine, learning, literature, art (including caligraphy), and music, but it must be understood that the lines of separation were not very clearly drawn, and a versatile man might be equally famous as a poet and a physician. When these professions are regarded from the point of view of the economist, the most striking fact is the narrowness of the market for their products or services. The educated middle class was very small, and the physician or artist or literary man could hope to obtain an adequate income only by attaching himself to the Imperial Court or to one of the provincial Governors who organised their surroundings on its model. Patronage was the one road to worldly success,² and patronage had usually to be paid for in the form of flattery or otherwise.

Akbar’s reign was a favourable period for these professions. The Emperor was interested in everything, and he was a generous patron, while the Court inevitably followed his example and was guided by his taste. At the same time it must be remembered that the atmosphere was predominantly foreign, and while Indian talent was not neglected, a large share of patronage was secured by visitors from Persia and other parts of Asia.¹ This patronage took three practical forms, the conferment of rank (mansab), the grant of stipends in land or cash, and the gift of rewards for particular performances. The lists of eminent men in the Ain-i Akbari show that official rank might be conferred on physicians, artists, poets, and scholars, as well as on soldiers and administrators, while we read from time to time of rewards conferred in the traditional style on the production of a poem or other work of art. The remaining form of patronage, the grant of stipends, requires a rather longer notice. Stipends were sometimes given in the form of cash allowances, but the ordinary course was to grant an assignment of the revenue of a particular area of land. These assignments were known by the Turki name of swyūrghāl, by the Persianised expression madad-ima’āsh, and by various other names ; they differed from the assignments to officers (jāgīr) in being granted for an indefinite period, and were in theory hereditary, but it would be a great mistake to regard them as permanent in the sense which that word bears in modern administration. Almost throughout the whole period of Moslem rule the policy in regard to these assignments seems to have followed a more or less definite cycle ; there would be a long period of lavishness in granting, coupled with every conceivable variety of fraud in the details of the allotments, and then there would be a shorter interval of vigorous financial reform, in the course of which many of the existing grants would be either cancelled or greatly reduced in value. The allocation of the assignments was vested in one of the chief officers of the Empire, designated the Sadr, and the history of this post furnished by Abul Fazl is a consistent record of corruption.

In Akbar’s Empire, then, the chief characteristic of a professional career was insecurity. Success depended on favour, which might be withdrawn as quickly as it was granted, and even the most stable forms of income were in practice held only during pleasure, and were liable to be cut off summarily on a change in the personnel of the administration. The economist is not directly concerned with the bearing of this system on the quality of the work produced, and for my present purpose it is sufficient to lay stress on the insecurity of the career. I think it is probable that conditions in the south of India were essentially similar, but I have found little direct evidence bearing on the subject.¹ We may, however, note Tavernier’s observation, half a century later, that in all the countries traversed in the course of his journey through the Carnatic, Golconda, and Bijapur there were scarcely any doctors except for kings and princes ; the common people doctored themselves with herbs which they gathered, while a large town might contain one man—or possibly two—with some practice in medicine. The opinion may be hazarded that in Akbar’s time the prospects of artists and professional men were more favourable in the north than in the south ; the Deccan kings of the period do not stand out as patrons, while the decay of the central authority in Vijayanagar must have diverted the thoughts of the nobles from literature and art.

The influence of the Court, which so largely dominated the professions, becomes comparatively unimportant when we turn to examine the position of the religious classes. The main subdivisions of these — the ascetics and mendicants—appear from contemporary accounts to have been proportionately as numerous as at the present day, and travellers comment on their abundance in various parts of the country ; they concern the economist only as representing a withdrawal from the productive forces of the country. Of priests as distinct from ascetics the authorities tell us little. Mr. Sewell records that in the first half of the sixteenth century a large number of grants were made by the nobles of Vijaya- nagar to temples throughout Southern India, and we may fairly assume that in the north and centre the religious foundations continued to enjoy the ancient grants and assign- ments, at least wherever the local administration was in the hands of zamindars. Akbar also appears to have continued the practice of making grants of this kind. The Ain-i Akbari speaks of his liberality in general terms, but does not say definitely that he gave religious grants to Hindus. Badaoni, however, in describing the revision of grants made by Shaikh Abd-un Nabi on his appointment as Sadr states that while learned Moslems had to be content with small portions of their former allotments, “the ordinary run of ignorant and worth- less fellows, even down to Hindus, would get as much land as they asked for without question”; and the same writer indicates that the articles used in the ceremonial weighments of the Emperor were distributed to brahmans among other persons. We may conclude, therefore, that some share of the Emperor’s liberality reached Hindu religious endowments.

Moslem institutions had benefited very largely by grants and assignments made by Akbar’s predecessors, and in the early part of his reign they must have consumed a substantial portion of the revenues of the State. Akbar’s later attitude was, however, hostile, and, if we may believe Badaoni, the revisional operations to which reference has just been made were very unfavourable to the Moslems, and must have resulted in a serious diminution of the income enjoyed by their institutions. The Ain-i Akbari gives statistics of the assignments of revenue in force towards the end of the reign. It is not possible to draw quantitative conclusions from these figures, partly because the text is still uncertain, and partly because they do not distinguish between the objects of the various assignments, but give only the totals assigned for objects of very different classes; all that can be said is that, in spite of the energy of financial reformers, a considerable portion of the State revenue remained alienated for the support of religious institutions, professional and learned men, and others whose claim to charity rested solely on their poverty. Of the economic position of the beneficiaries we have no contemporary information. Certainly many temples in India had accumulated large resources, for their plunder was a recognised means of securing wealth, but to my mind it is equally certain that there were many good men of all ways of thinking, doing their best according to their light, and living in a state of poverty which might be either compulsory or voluntary ; in this respect, at least, there is no reason for supposing that India has changed materially in the course of the last three centuries.

IV. SERVANTS AND SLAVES

The amount of labour expended in the performance of personal services is, if I am not mistaken, one of the outstanding economic facts of the age of Akbar. Some of the men thus employed were free, while others were slaves, but the functions assigned to the two classes were to a great extent interchangeable, and for the present purpose it is sufficient to treat them as a single group. In order to realise fully the extent to which productive forces were diverted to serve the purposes of luxury and display it is necessary to acquire a thorough familiarity with the conditions of life in India at this period, and the subject might be illustrated by quotations from practically every writer who has said anything at all about the country or the people. To collect all the contemporary statements would, however, involve much and tedious repetition, and I shall attempt to give only such a selection as will enable the reader to appreciate the nature of the evidence which is available. So far as Northern India is concerned, it will suffice to refer to some of the details of Akbar’s Court recorded by Abul Fazl, bearing in mind that, as is shown abundantly in the chronicles of the time, the Emperor set the standard in such matters, and that every one who occupied or aspired to a position at Court followed that example so far as his means allowed. The first section of the Imperial Household described in the Ain-i Akbari is the zanana, which contained more than 5000 ladies, each of whom had separate apartments ; they were attended by an adequate staff of servants, and watched in successive circles by female guards, eunuchs, Rajputs, and the porters at the gates, apart from the troops stationed on all four sides of the buildings. Next we come to the Imperial camp, which employed between 2000 and 3000 servants in addition to a guard of cavalry ; there was one tent in particular which required 1000 men for a week for its erection. Supplies for the Household were obtained from distant sources, apparently regardless of the amount of labour expended. Wherever the Emperor might be, water for his use was brought from the Ganges, while ice came daily by post carriages and by runners from the snowy mountains to Lahore, and fruit was supplied regularly from Kashmir and Kabul, and even from more distant sources, such as Badakhshan and Samarqand. The stables swarmed with men as well as animals ; each ordinary elephant, for instance, had four servants, but this number was increased to seven in the case of animals chosen for the Emperor’s use.¹ The number of men employed in connection with sport and amusement cannot be calculated accurately, but was in the aggregate very large ; a thousand swordsmen and many wrestlers were constantly in attendance at Court, a numerous staff was employed specially for hunting and shooting, another for hawking, another for pigeon-flying, and provision was made for training the fighting instincts of a variety of animals down to frogs and spiders. These instances are drawn from departments where the organisation had received the Emperor’s personal attention, and it is easy to understand that his principal officers modelled their establish- ments on similar lines, one employing 500 torch-bearers, another having a daily service of a thousand rich dishes, and so on. A Mogul army in the field had on the average two or three servants for each fighting man ; and that the fashion was not confined to the entourage of the Emperor is shown by della Valle’s statement that at Surat servants and slaves were so numerous and so cheap that “ everybody, even of mean fortune, keeps a great family, and is splendidly attended.”

Such glimpses as we have of life in the Deccan at this period disclose an essentially similar picture. Pyrard, for instance, tells of the state maintained at Goa by the Bijapur envoy, who was accompanied about the town by a crowd of servants, pages, bearers, grooms, and musicians, and he adds that all the great men of the Deccan indulged in similar display. Thévenot, writing of a later period, gives a corre- sponding description of life in Golconda ; the nobles had large followings, and every one, whether Hindu or Moslem, who had any sort of position imitated the nobles, having at the very least an umbrella-bearer, a cup-bearer, and two attendants to drive away flies. Life in Vijayanagar was organised on the same lines as may be seen from the accounts of visitors to that city before its destruction, and the narra- tives of missionaries show similar profusion at the courts of the Southern nobles towards the end of the sixteenth century. On the Malabar coast again we find that to European observers the number of attendants was the most striking feature ; Pyrard, for instance, says that the Zamorin of Calicut travelled with about 3000 men in his train, and that on the coast generally the prominent men had always a large following. Similar fashions prevailed at Goa, where the Portuguese imitated the social life of their neighbours, and we are shown the men of quality attended through the streets by pages, lacqueys, and slaves in great number, with a led-horse and a palanquin behind even when the master preferred to go on foot. It will thus be understood that the profusion of servants, which attracts attention in India at the present day, is no modern phenomenon, but is in fact an attenuated survival of the fashions prevailing in the time of Akbar and doubtless dating from a much earlier period.

As has already been said, these servants were in some cases free, and in other cases slaves. Free men were hired at rates which sufficed for a little more than a bare existence, and consequently look absurdly low when stated in terms of modern currency ; a servant with no special qualifications cost about $1\frac{1}{2}$ rupees monthly at Akbar’s Court, and perhaps 2 rupees on the west coast. The data on record regarding the price of slaves are too scanty to furnish a similar generalisa- tion; Pyrard, as we have seen, puts the price of a slave-girl at the equivalent of about 50 rupees in Goa, which was a very busy market for such commodities, but the rate must have varied between very wide limits, depending as it did partly on the qualities of the individual and partly on fluctuations in the supply. To speak, however, of human beings as com- modities is likely to produce an instinctive feeling of revolt in the minds of modern readers, and in truth the idea of slavery has become so unfamiliar in modern British India that it may be well to say a few words regarding the position formerly occupied by the institution. Its disappearance may fairly be described as recent; until the passing of Act V. of 1843 the British Courts in India were occupied in deciding questions arising out of the servile status of individuals, and the leading text-books on Hindu and Moslem law discussed these questions on precisely the same footing as those arising out of adoption, or partition, or inheritance. Nor was the institution a rare survival at that period : the Report on which Act V. was based affirms that slavery prevailed more or less throughout the territories forming the Presidency of Bengal as well as in Madras and Bombay, and gives instances of bodies of 2000 slaves being owned by individual proprietors ; yet its dis- appearance is so complete that the subject is scarcely mentioned in the current text-books of Indian history.

In discussing the institution as it existed in Akbar’s time it is convenient to distinguish clearly between urban and rural servitude. So far as I can see, two distinct systems had grown up in India side by side. In the villages the labourer was, at least in practice, in the position of a serf, and I do not think that Akbar’s officers can have been troubled with questions affecting his legal status ; in the towns and cities slaves were employed for many domestic purposes, and the incidents of their position were governed, at least to some extent, by the principles of law. The interest of rural serfdom arises from its importance in primary production, and it can be discussed most conveniently in connection with the organisation of agriculture: for the present I shall deal only with what may be called urban or domestic servi- tude, which was concerned almost exclusively with luxury and display.

Slavery must be accepted as a Hindu institution, though in Akbar’s time at least it did not secure the approval of all Hindus, and the text-writers refine and distinguish accord- ing to their practice regarding its origin and incidents. The institution is also sanctioned, though on a more restricted basis, by Moslem law, and in either case Akbar and his con- temporaries had legal justification for its recognition; in the Mogul Empire, however, its basis was wider than strict Moslem lawyers would have been disposed to authorise, and we may take it that, the institution itself being accepted as natural and reasonable, the local customs regarding it were adopted without much scrutiny of their legality. The existence of slavery in Vijayanagar is testified to by the travellers Abdur Razak, Conti, and Barbosa. It would be safe to assume that it prevailed in the Deccan, because it prevailed farther north in the country whence the Deccan dynasties sprung, and we may believe Nikitin’s statement that in his time there was a trade in “black people” in Bidar. The Portuguese in this matter as in others followed the custom of the country: Linschoten recorded that they never worked, but employed slaves, who were sold daily in the market like beasts, and della Valle notes that the “greatest part” of the people in Goa were slaves. Various accounts could be quoted to prove the prevalence of slavery in the Mogul Empire, but its formal recognition in the Ain-i Akbari is sufficient evidence of the fact. We may infer from della Valle’s statements that the principal Hindus at Surat—perhaps the most humane people that ever lived—disapproved entirely of slavery, but I do not think this remark can be extended to Hindus generally; many of them are known to have held slaves up to the time when legal recognition of the institution was with- drawn.

Slaves were obtained from various sources. The import trade from Africa and Western Asia was of substantial im- portance, as has been noticed in a previous chapter, while there was also an export trade westwards ; foreign slaves were costly, and were essentially articles of luxury. As regards Indian slaves, the status was hereditary under both systems of law, while the number could be increased in various ways, such as capture and voluntary or involuntary surrender. Capture was recognised by both Hindu and Moslem law, and in India this recognition led to serious abuses, for it became the fashion to raid a village or group of villages without any obvious justification, and carry off the inhabitants as slaves : early in his reign Akbar found it necessary to issue orders prohibiting the soldiery from taking part in such forays.¹ Under involuntary surrender may be classed condemnation for criminal offences, and sale of insolvent debtors (with their families), as well as the persons and families of revenue- defaulters, instances of such procedure being occasionally met with in contemporary narratives. Voluntary surrender has a more painful interest ; its commonest occurrence was in the sale of children by their famine-stricken parents, a course which may fairly be described as normal in Akbar’s time and for two centuries after.² We read of a Persian envoy taking home a large number of Indian children, because famine had made them cheap during his visit ; and Barbosa tells us that when the people on the Coromandel coast were starving, the ships of Malabar used to carry food there and return laden with slaves, the people selling their own children for provisions. In ordinary times, how- ever, children were stolen or kidnapped as well as pur- chased, and Bengal in particular was notorious for this practice in its most repulsive form.¹ There were still other sources from which slaves might be obtained, but enough has perhaps been said to show that the market must have been adequately supplied, and that a member of the upper classes who desired to make a display would have little difficulty in obtaining as many as he was prepared to buy. With the details of the slave’s position the economist is not directly concerned, but I know of no evidence suggesting that the class was badly treated as a whole. Slaves were largely interchangeable with free men, and it is reasonable to con- clude that the two classes of servants were treated on the whole alike, as was the case at the time when the existence of the institution was at last brought to a close.²

We have now passed in review the classes composing the first of the two main groups into which the population of India has been divided, that which is of interest chiefly from the standpoint of consumption, and we have seen that the effect of the existing social and political system was to with- draw from useful employment a large share of the energy and resources of the people, and to direct them towards unprofit- able expenditure. In regard to labour, we have to take into account the man-power employed in official and domestic service, or engaged in religious pursuits ; these avocations may indeed be classed as “ necessary,” but all essential needs could have been met with very much smaller forces. The armies were in the aggregate certainly much more numerous than those now maintained, but the men were wasted for lack of proper organisation and training ; much of the domestic service rendered was sheer waste ; and from the economist’s point of view the throngs of religious mendicants can be placed on no higher plane. Turning to the upper ranks, we have seen that the only career open to men of ability and enterprise was the service or the bounty of the State, and that the dominant note of this career was consumption rather than production of wealth. A wealthy upper class may render substantial economic services if they use their wealth wisely, and direct a steady flow of savings into productive channels, but there are no signs that such services were rendered in the India of Akbar’s time, and where savings were accumulated they took the useless form of stores of gold and silver and gems. In the aggregate, a very substantial proportion of the income of the country was spent on waste and super- fluities, the cost of which fell in the long-run on the producing classes, the peasants, artisans, and merchants ; the next stage in this study is to examine the conditions under which these classes fed and clothed the population and provided the surplus to pay for this extravagance and waste.

AUTHORITIES FOR CHAPTER III

SECTION 1.—The position of the nobles in Vijayanagar is indicated in Barbosa, 296-97, and in more detail in Sewell, especially 280, 373, 384. The position at the end of the sixteenth century can be gathered from in- cidental references in Hay, 733-780. For the Deccan, see Thévenot, 290 ff.

The Ain (translation, i. 233-265) gives full details as to Akbar’s organisa- tion ; Blochmann’s notes on this subject are most valuable, but by them- selves are inadequate, and should be supplemented by Irvine. Badaoni’s account of the irregularities is reproduced in Blochmann’s translation of the Ain (i. 242). As regards jagirs, a perusal of the chapters in the Ain quoted above leaves the impression that assignments were commonly given, but the word jagir may in this case be used to signify a post traditionally remunerated by assignment, but actually carrying a salary. More im- portant perhaps is the account given by Jahangir (Tuzuk, translation, i. 7) of the orders issued on his accession, confirming the jagirs held by his father’s servants.

For the composition of the Imperial Service, see Bernier, 212, and Ain, translation, i. 309-528. References to the Emperor’s claim to inherit have been given above under Chapter II. 6 ; the rule appears to have been of Mogul and not of Indian origin, for Sikandar Lodi is represented as having ruled that the property (though not the offices or jagirs) of a deceased noble should pass to his heirs (Elliot, History, iv. 327). Jahangir’s practice in regard to jagirs may be gathered from his own account which is scattered through the Tuzuk : Hawkins (in Purchas, I. iii. 221) gives a graphic but perhaps prejudiced account of the frequency of transfers, and other European authorities write in the same sense. For the Karoris, see Badaoni (Lowe’s translation, ii. 192). Badaoni’s account is translated also in Elliot, History, v. 513, and the same volume contains (p. 383) the reference in the Tabakat- i-Akbari. The subject is noticed in the Journal, R.A.S., for January 1918, p. 27.

SECTION 2.—The position of the Ahadis is stated clearly in the Ain (translation, i. 249); we meet them occasionally in the narratives of European travellers, the name taking various forms, e.g. “haddies” (Purchas, I. iii. 216). The local forces (būmi) are referred to in the opening chapter of Book II. of the Ain (translation, i. 232), and their numbers are specified in the “Account of the XII. Subas” (idem, ii. 115 ff.). Informa- tion regarding the rest of the troops is scattered through Books I. and II. of the Ain; the best summary will be found in Irvine. For the preference to foreigners, see the Ain, passim, e.g., translation, i. 321; “Turanis and Persians get 25 rupees, and Hindustanis 20 rupees.”

The horse-supply of Southern India is a common topic in the Decadas, and is discussed in Whiteway, ch. vii. viii.; the trade is referred to in the treaties made by the Portuguese, see for an instance Sewell, 186. The prices given by Pyrard will be found in translation, ii. 66, 67; a few years earlier Linschoten put the price of horses in Goa at 400 to 500 pardaos. For the pay of soldiers in Golconda, see Thévenot, 301. For instances of fighting among the nobles of Vijayanagar, see Hay, 759, 781. The procedure at Akbar’s headquarters is detailed in the Ain (transla- tion, i. 258 ff.): that of the revenue administration is given in ii. 43-49. The passages quoted from Pyrard are translated from i. 258, 297. References to the subordinate executive service are scattered through the Ain; see especially translation, ii. 45, 66. The passages regarding the Karoris have been given under the preceding section.

SECTION 3.—The position of artists and professional men at Akbar’s Court is dealt with in the Ain (translation, i. 96 ff. 537 ff.), and much light is thrown on it by Blochmann’s notes to these sections as well as to the list of mansabdars (idem, i. 308 ff.). For sayurghals, see i. 268 ff., and the references given in Blochmann’s notes. Tavernier’s observations on doctors in the south will be found in ii. 213. For grants to religious institutions, see Sewell, 178; Ain, translation, i. 266 ff.; Elliot, History, v. 522.

SECTION 4.—The first two books of the Ain (beginning at i. 44 of the translation) contain the details of Akbar’s establishment. The other illustrations given of the fashion of keeping many servants are drawn from Purchas, I. iv. 432: della Valle, 42, 82; Pyrard (translation, i. 376, ii. 75, 80, 135); Thévenot, 307; but, as indicated in the text, practically every contemporary writer has something to say on the topic. For the legal aspect of slavery in British India, readers may consult Macnaghten, while the Slavery Report contains a large though incomplete collection of facts. For slavery in the south, see Major, 29, 30, 31; Bar- bosa, 309, 358; Linschoten, c. 29; della Valle, 157; Pyrard, translation, ii. 39. For slaves under Akbar, see Ain, translation, i. 253-254. The sale of children is a commonplace; the instances given in the text are from Bernier, 151, and Barbosa, 358.

Notes