Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/139

 REPRESSIVE MEASURES 107 tions in a few months pointed to something amiss, and the Sultan determined to find out the causes of the discontent. After many consultations day and night with his chief counsellors, it was resolved that the main reasons were to be found in the Sultan's disregard of the doings of the people; in the prevalence of convivial meetings where open political talk followed the wine- cup; in the seditious intimacy of the various amirs and notables; and in the fact that too many people had a superfluity of wealth with which they could suborn adventurers and set revolts on foot. Whether these results were really the opinions of the council or merely the ex post facto deductions of the historian who records them, they were at least acted upon by the king. The evil effects of too much wealth among his subjects particularly impressed him: it was a disease admitting of easy and gratifying cure. " The Sultan," says Barani, " ordered that wherever there was a village held by proprietary right, in free gift, or as a religious endowment, it should by one stroke of the pen be brought under the exchequer. The people were pressed and amerced, and money was exacted from them on every kind of pretext. Many were left without any money, till at length it came to pass that, excepting maliks and amirs, officials, the large traders from Multan, and the bankers, no one possessed even a trifle in cash. So rigorous was the confiscation that, beyond a few thousand tankas (a coin about equivalent in value to the modern rupee), all the pensions, grants in land, and endowments in the country were appro-