Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/50

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INTRODUCTION.

xl

the invader's

name on the

holiest spot of all

—the

birthplace of

Rama. In the troubled times which followed the death of the first Mughal emperor of India, Oudh was the focus of disaffection to the rulino- house, and it was not till more than forty years later that it owned the clemency and power of the great Akbar. The constant revolts and victories on which that power was based brought the province into prominent notice, and it was for some time one of the most important and honourable among the viceroyalties of the empire. The revenue system, introduced a few years earher by the Afghan emperor Sher Shah, was perfected by Akbar and in an Indian province the revenue administration exhausts It is not almost every element of value in its political history. proposed to repeat in detail the regulations which are described with minute distinctness in the Xin-i-Akbari, but the information to be gained from that bookmay be supplemented from local records and tradition. The arbitrary revenue divisions, originally proposed on the basis of the amount of revenue to be collected, were either never introduced or yielded in a very short time to the ancient parganas, which almost always were coterminous with Lists of villages with their the authority of a Hindu chief. Qaniingos assessments were prepared with laborious accuracy. and chaudhris were appointed for each pargana, usually from among the residents themselves, to superintend their preparation and annual correction, and it is probable that now, for the first time, the treasury of the empire acquired any precise account of the sources from which its income was drawn. We have sufficient information to be able to conclude what measures were adopted to meet the great difficulty which has always met the administrator in his attempt" to collect the revenue direct from the village heads or the cultivators themselves. The Hindu chiefs were powerless, it is true, against the empire in its most flourishing days, but they remained a standing menace to its weakness. To exterminate them was out of the question. The limits of their petty states wers preserved in the only form of revenue division with which it was possible to govern, and it was certain that their authority, national and long-established, would be re-asserted at the first opportunity. The only policy was to refrain from driving them to extreme, and to conciliate them as far as possible by honourary distinctions and employment. They were consequently provided for by concessions out of the revenue. Some were allowed to hold certain villages of the raj revenuefree, and devote the collections entirely to their private purposes,