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ambitious and diligent nobleman reverted to the State at his death. This amounts to the undoing of life's work at death. A simple illustration may be given. The Mansab, say of five thousand, which was conferred on a nobleman by the emperor has no implication of its continuance with regard to his son after the noble's death. Everything is a matter of distinction and imperial favour, while the son of a nobleman may enjoy a greater Mansab or none at all. Everything is ephemeral in such a society.
Under the Mughals, the Sarkar is the territorial unit while the Mahal is a revenue division; or, to put it in another way, the Mahal is the fiscal unit while the Parganah is a fixed historical division. All the revenue documents of the Mughal times have, as their avowed objects, the extension of cultivation on the one hand, and the improving of the crops on the other; but both so designed as to accelerate the increase of the revenue of the State. Above all, it should be noted that the revenue system need not necessarily be uniform throughout a Subah or a province, but was subject to the determining elements of local conditions, and the Ain states that "the revenue of a Bigah differs in every village".[1]
Technique to be met with in the Nomenclature
of the System.
Having seen the nature of the Mughal land revenue system, let us now turn to the technique which it has evolved during the period of its vogue. An exhaustive study of the said system reveals a host of unintelligible
- ↑ Ain-i-Akbari, p. 188.
