Page:Mughal Land Revenue System.djvu/18

 Mughal land revenue system, to do full justice to the subject, is the system of land tenure which was in vogue during the period of Indian history ranging between the years 1526 and 1707. roughly two centuries, between beginning with the accession of Zahirud-Din Muhammad, the famous Babar, and seeing its last phase in the death of the Puritan Emperor in 1707. To pay deference to chronological fact, we have to exclude from our survey the period covered by the years 1542 and 1545 when the Sur dynasty reigned at Delhi, and include the century and a half from the death of Aurangzib to that of Bahadur Shah II, the titular emperor of Delhi, the period when the degenerated replica of the Mughal empire was left to shift destitute on the billows of the protection afforded by short-lived potentates, until the final inundation of British power which culminated in the momentous exile and death of the last descendant of the dynasty of Timur to which the glorious Akbar traced his pedigree. But the reign of Sher Shah should be reviewed in order fully to understand the revenue system of Akbar whose famous minister Rajah Todar Mai was still a revenue administrator in embryo during his reign and received dexterous training from this emperor himself. The period from the death of Aurangzib may be safely avoided, since during this period the Mughal empire segregated into a congeries of vain dukedoms represented by shallow 'timariots'. According to Manu, revenue consists of a share of the Government in the gross output of the different kinds of grain, taxes on commerce, a small impost on petty