[19] According to the European travellers in India during the seventeenth century, provincial governors, and probably to some extent all large holders of service lands, employed various methods for adding to the profits which the assigned lands were meant to yield them. Of these devices two seem to have been specially common, the practice of supporting a body of horse smaller than the number agreed for, and the practice of purveyance that is of levying supplies without payment. Sir Thomas Roe, from a.d. 1615 to 1618 English ambassador at the court of the emperor Jehángír, gives the following details of these irregular practices: ‘The Pátan (that is Patna in Bengal) viceroy’s government was estimated at 5000 horse, the yearly pay of each trooper being £20 (Rs. 200), of which he kept only 1500, being allowed the surplus as dead pay. On one occasion this governor wished to present me with 100 loaves of the finest sugar, as white as snow, each loaf weighing fifty pounds. On my declining, he said, ‘You refuse these loaves, thinking I am poor; but being made in my government the sugar costs me nothing, as it comes to me gratis.’ Sir Thomas Roe in Kerr’s Voyages, IX. 282–284. The same writer, the best qualified of the English travellers of that time to form a correct opinion, thus describes the administration of the Musalmán governors of the seventeenth century: ‘They practise every kind of tyranny against the natives under their jurisdiction, oppressing them with continual exactions, and are exceedingly averse from any way being opened by which the king may be informed of their infamous proceedings. They grind the people under their government to extract money from them, often hanging men up by the heels to make them confess that they are rich, or to ransom themselves from faults merely imputed with a view to fleece them.’ Sir Thomas Roe in Kerr’s Voyages, IX. 338. [↑]
[20] Of these settlements the principal was that of the Ráthoḍ chief who in the thirteenth century established himself at Ídar, now one of the states of the Mahi Kántha. In the thirteenth century also, Gohils from the north and Sodha Parmárs and Káthis from Sindh entered Gujarát. Rás Mála, II. 269. [↑]
[21] Gujarát of about the year a.d. 1300 is thus described: ‘The air of Gujarát is healthy, and the earth picturesque; the vineyards bring forth blue grapes twice a year, and the strength of the soil is such that the cotton plants spread their branches like willow and plane trees, and yield produce for several years successively. Besides Cambay, the most celebrated of the cities of Hind in population and wealth, there are 70,000 towns and villages, all populous, and the people abounding in wealth and luxuries.’ Elliot’s History of India, III. 31, 32, and 43. Marco Polo, about a.d. 1292, says: ‘In Gujarát there grows much pepper and ginger and indigo. They have also a great deal of cotton. Their cotton trees are of very great size, growing full six paces high, and attaining to an age of twenty years.’ Yule’s Edition, II. 328. The cotton referred to was probably the variety known as devkapás Gossypium religiosum or peruvianum, which grows from ten to fifteen feet high, and bears for several years. Royle, 149–150. [↑]
[22] Elphinstone’s History, 762. [↑]
[23] Bird’s History of Gujarát, 110, 129, and 130. [↑]
[24] The passage from the Mirăt-i-Áhmedi, Bird 109, is: ‘A sum of 25 lákhs of húns and one kror of ibráhíms, that were two parts greater, being altogether nearly equal to 5 krors and 62 lákhs of rupees, was collected from the Dakhan tribute and the customs of the European and Arab ports.’ The word hún, from an old Karnátak word for gold, is the Musalmán name for the coin known among Hindus as varáha or the wild-boar coin, and among the Portuguese as the pagoda or temple coin. Prinsep Ind. Ant. Thomas’ Ed. II. U. T. 18. The old specimens of this coin weigh either 60 grains the máda or half pagoda, or 120 grains the hún or full pagoda. Thomas, Chron. Pat. Ks. II. 224, note. The star pagoda, in which English accounts at Madras were formerly kept, weighs 52·56 grains, and was commonly valued at 8s. or Rs. 4 (Prinsep as above). At this rate in the present sum the 25 lákhs of húns would equal one kror (100 lákhs) of rupees. The ibráhími, ‘two parts greater than the hún,’ would seem to be a gold coin, perhaps a variety of the Persian ashrafi (worth about 9s. English. Marsden, N. O. 455). Taking the two parts of a hún as fánams or sixteenths, this would give the ibráhími a value of Rs. 4¼, and make a total customs revenue of 425 lákhs of rupees. This statement of the revenues of the kingdom is, according to the author of the Mirăt-i-Áhmedi, taken from such times as the power of the Gujarát kings continued to increase. The total revenue of the twenty-five districts (£5,840,000) is the amount recovered in the year a.d. 1571. But the receipts under the head of Tribute must have been compiled from accounts of earlier years. For, as will be seen below, the neighbouring kings ceased to pay tribute after the end of the reign of Bahádur (a.d. 1536). Similarly the customs revenues entered as received from Daman and other places must have been taken from the accounts of some year previous to a.d. 1560. [↑]
[25] The remains at Chámpáner in the British district of the Panch Maháls are well known. Of Mehmúdábád, the town of that name in the district of Kaira, eighteen miles south of Áhmedábád, a few ruins only are left. In a.d. 1590 this city is said to have contained many grand edifices surrounded with a wall eleven miles (7 kos) square with at every ¾ mile (½ kos) a pleasure house, and an enclosure for deer and other game. (Áin-i-Akbari: Gladwin, II. 64.) The Mirăt-i-Áhmedi makes no special reference to the sovereign’s share of the revenue. The greater part of the £5,620,000 derived from tribute and customs would probably go to the king, besides the lands specially set apart as crown domains, which in a.d. 1571 were returned as yielding a yearly revenue of £900,000 (900,000,000 tankás). This would bring the total income of the crown to a little more than 6½ millions sterling. [↑]
[26] So Sikandar Lodi emperor of Dehli, a.d. 1488–1517, is reported to have said: ‘The magnificence of the kings of Dehli rests on wheat and barley; the magnificence of the kings of Gujarát rests on coral and pearls.’ Bird, 132. [↑]
[27] The twelve Gujarát ports mentioned by Barbosa are: On the south coast of the peninsula, two: Patenixi (Pátan-Somnáth, now Verával), very rich and of great trade; Surati-Mangalor (Mangrul), a town of commerce, and Diu. On the shores of the gulf of Cambay four: Gogari (Gogha), a large town; Barbesy (Broach); Guandári or Gandar (Gandhár), a very good town; and Cambay. On the western coast five: Ravel (Ránder), a rich place; Surat, a city of very great trade; Denvy (Gandevi), a place of great trade; Baxay (Bassein), a good seaport in which much goods are exchanged; and Tanamayambu (Thána-Máhim), a town of great Moorish mosques, but of little trade. (Stanley’s Barbosa, 59–68). The only one of these ports whose identification seems doubtful is Ravel, described by Barbosa (page 67) as a pretty town of the Moors on a good river, twenty leagues south of Gandhár. This agrees with the position of Ránder on the Tápti, nearly opposite Surat, which appears in Al Bírúni (a.d. 1030) as Ráhanur one of the capitals of south Gujarát and is mentioned under the name Ránir, both in the Áin-i-Akbari (a.d. 1590) and in the Mirăt-i-Áhmedi for the year a.d. 1571, as a place of trade, ‘in ancient times a great city.’ In his description of the wealth of Cambay, Barbosa is supported by the other European travellers of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. According to Nicolo de Conti (a.d. 1420–1444), the town, including its suburbs, was twelve miles in circuit abounding in spikenard, lac, indigo, myrobalans, and silk. Athanasius Nikotin (a.d. 1468–1474) found it a manufacturing place for every sort of goods as long gowns damasks and blankets; and Varthema (a.d. 1503–1508) says it abounds in grain and very good fruits, supplying Africa Arabia and India with silk and cotton stuffs; ‘it is impossible to describe its excellence.’ Barbosa’s account of Áhmedábád is borne out by the statement in the Áin-i-Akbari (Gladwin, II. 63) that the whole number of the suburbs (purás) of the city was 360, and in the Mirăt-i-Áhmedi, that it once contained 380 suburbs each of considerable size, containing good buildings and markets filled with everything valuable and rare, so that each was almost a city. Bird, 311. [↑]
[28] Gladwin’s Áin-i-Akbari, II. 62–63. Compare Terry (Voyage, 80, 131) in 1615: Gujarát a very goodly large and exceeding rich province with, besides its most spacious populous and rich capital Áhmedábád, four fair cities Cambay Baroda Broach and Surat with great trade to the Red Sea, Achin, and other places. At the same time (Ditto, 179–180) though the villages stood very thick, the houses were generally very poor and base, all set close together some with earthen walls and flat roofs, most of them cottages miserably poor little and base set up with sticks rather than timber. [↑]