Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/183

Rh land or money in return for military service; and the civil administration was governed on the same principle. The mansab and jagir system pervaded the whole empire. The governors of provinces were mansabdars, and received grants of land in lieu of salary for the maintenance of their state and their troops, while they were required to pay about a fifth of the revenue to the emperor. All the land in the realm was thus parcelled out among a number of timariots, who were practically absolute in their own districts, and extorted the uttermost farthing from the wretched peasantry who tilled their lands.

GOLD COIN OF AURANGZIB, STRUCK AT THATTA, A.H. 1072 (A.D. 1661-2).

The only exceptions were the royal demesnes, and these were farmed out to contractors who had all the vices without the distinction of the mansabdars. As it was always the policy of the Moghuls to shift the vassal-lords from one estate to another, in order to prevent them from acquiring a permanent local influence and prestige, the same disastrous results ensued as in the precarious appointments of Turkey. Each governor or feudatory sought to extort as much as possible out of his province, or jagir, in order to have capital in hand when he should be transplanted or deprived, and in the remoter parts of the empire the rapacity of the landholders went on almost