[29] The decrease in the Mughal collections from Gujarát compared with the revenues of the Áhmedábád kings may have been due to Akbar’s moderation. It may also have been due to a decline in prosperity. Compare Roe’s (1617) account of Toda about fifty miles south-east of Ajmír. It was the best and most populous country Roe had seen in India. The district was level with fertile soil abounding in corn cotton and cattle and the villages were so numerous and near together as hardly to exceed a kos from each other. The town was the best built Roe had seen in India tiled two-storied houses good enough for decent shopkeepers. It had been the residence of a Rájput Rája before the conquests of Akbar Sháh and stood at the foot of a good and strong rock about which were many excellent works of hewn stone, well cut, with many tanks arched over with well-turned vaults and large and deep descents to them. Near it was a beautiful grove two miles long and a quarter of a mile broad all planted with mangoes tamarinds and other fruit trees, divided by shady walks and interspersed with little temples and idol altars with many fountains wells and summer houses of carved stone curiously arched so that a poor banished Englishman might have been content to dwell there. This observation may serve universally for the whole country that ruin and devastation operate everywhere. For since the property of all has become vested in the king no person takes care of anything so that in every place the spoil and devastations of war appear and nowhere is anything repaired. Roe in Kerr’s Voyages, IX. 320–321. [↑]
[30] Bird’s History of Gujarát. Another detailed statement of the revenue of Gujarát given in the Mirăt-i-Áhmedi, apparently for the time when the author wrote (a.d. 1760) gives: Revenue from crown lands £2,107,518; tribute-paying divisions or sarkárs £12,700; Mahí Kántha tribute £178,741; Vátrak Kántha tribute £159,768; and Sábar Kántha tribute £121,151; in all £2,579,878: adding to this £20,000 for Kachh, £40,000 for Dungarpur, and £5000 for Sirohi, gives a grand total of £2,644,878. According to a statement given by Bird in a note at page 108 of his History, the revenue of Gujarát under Jehángir (a.d. 1605–1627) averaged £1,250,000; under Aurangzíb (a.d. 1658–1707) £1,519,622; and under Muhammad Sháh (a.d. 1719–1748) £1,218,360. In this passage the revenue under the emperor Akbar (a.d. 1556–1605) is given at £66,845. This total is taken from Gladwin’s Áin-i-Akbari. But at vol. II. page 73 of that work there would seem to be some miscalculation; for while the total number of dáms (1⁄40th of a rupee) is 43,68,02,301, the conversion into rupees is Rs. 10,96,123 instead of Rs. 1,09,20,057½. The corresponding returns given by Mr. Thomas (Rev. of the Mog. Emp. page 52) are under Akbar, a.d. 1594, £1,092,412; under Sháh Jahán, a.d. 1648, £1,325,000; and under Aurangzíb, a.d. 1658 £2,173,220, a.d. 1663–1666 £1,339,500, a.d. 1697 £2,330,500, and a.d. 1707 £1,519,623. The varieties in the currency employed in different parts of the accounts cause some confusion in calculating the Gujarát revenue. Under the Áhmedábád kings the accounts were kept in tánkás or 1⁄100 of rupees, while under the Mughals dáms or 1⁄45th of a rupee took the place of tánkás. The revenues from Surat Baroda Broach and other districts south of the Máhi were returned in changízis, a coin varying in value from something over ⅔rds of a rupee to slightly less than ½; the revenues from Rádhanpur and Morvi were entered in mahmúdis, a coin nearly identical in value with the changízi, while, as noticed above, the tribute and customs dues are returned in a gold currency, the tribute in huns of about 8s. (Rs. 4) and the customs in ibráhímís of 9s. (Rs. 4½). [↑]
[31] Áin-i-Akbari (Gladwin), I. 305. The Áin-i-Akbari mentions four ways of calculating the state share in an unsurveyed field: (1) to measure the land with the crops standing and make an estimate; (2) to reap the crops, collect the grain in barns, and divide it according to agreement; (3) to divide the field as soon as the seed is sown; and (4) to gather the grain into heaps on the field and divide it there. [↑]
[32] The men to whom this 2½ per cent was granted are referred to in the Mirăt-i-Áhmedi as desáis. Whatever doubt may attach to the precise meaning of the term desái it seems clear that it was as village headmen that the desáis petitioned for and received this grant. These desáis were the heads of villages with whom, as noticed above, the government agent for collecting the revenue dealt, and who, agreeing for the whole village contribution, themselves carried out the details of allotment and collection from the individual cultivators. In the sharehold villages north of the Narbada, the headman who would be entitled to this 2½ per cent was the representative of the body of village shareholders. South of the Narbada, in villages originally colonised by officers of the state, the representatives of these officers would enjoy the 2½ per cent. In south Gujarát the desáis or heads of villages also acted as district hereditary revenue officers; but it was not as district hereditary revenue officers, but as heads of villages, that they received from Akbar this 2½ per cent assignment. In north Gujarát there were desáis who were only district revenue officers. These men would seem to have received no part of Akbar’s grant in 1589–90, for as late as a.d. 1706 the emperor Aurangzíb, having occasion to make inquiries into the position of the desáis, found that hitherto they had been supported by cesses and illegal exactions, and ordered that a stop should be put to all such exactions, and a fixed assignment of 2½ per cent on the revenues of the villages under their charge should be allowed them. It does not appear whether the Surat desáis succeeded in obtaining Aurangzíb’s grant of 2½ per cent as district revenue officers in addition to Akbar’s (a.d. 1589) assignment of 2½ per cent as heads of villages. [↑]
[33] Bird’s History of Gujarát, 409. [↑]
[34] Áhmedábád (a.d. 1583) by Muzaffar Sháh the last king of Gujarát; Cambay (a.d. 1573) by Muhammad Husain Mirza; and Surat (a.d. 1609) by Malik Ambar the famous general of the king of Amednagar. In such unsettled times it is not surprising that the European travellers of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, between Áhmedábád and Cambay found native merchants marching in large weekly caravans which rested at night within a space barricaded by carts. (Kerr, IX. 127 and 201.) The English merchants, on their way from one factory to another, were accompanied by an escort, and, in spite of their guard, were on more than one occasion attacked by large bands of Rájputs. (Kerr, IX. 127, 187, 201, 203.) As regards the state of the different parts of the province, Nicholas Ufflet, who went from Agra to Surat about 1610, describes the north, from Jhálor to Áhmedábád, as throughout the whole way a sandy and woody country, full of thievish beastly men, and savage beasts such as lions and tigers; from Áhmedábád to Cambay the road was through sands and woods much infested by thieves; from Cambay to Broach it was a woody and dangerous journey; but from Broach to Surat the country was goodly, fertile, and full of villages, abounding in wild date trees. (Kerr, VIII. 303.) Passing from the mouth of the Tápti to Surat Mr. Copland (24th Dec. 1613) was delighted to see at the same time the goodliest spring and harvest he had ever seen. ‘Often of two adjoining fields, one was as green as a fine meadow, and the other waving yellow like gold and ready to be cut down, and all along the roads were many goodly villages.’ (Kerr, IX. 119.) At that time the state of north-east Gujarát was very different. Terry, 1617 (Voyage, 404), describes the passage of nineteen days from Mándu near Dhár to Áhmedábád as short journeys in a wilderness where a way had to be cut and made even and the great space required for the Mughal’s camp rid and made plain by grubbing up trees and bushes. And between Cambay and Áhmedábád De la Valle, a.d. 1623 (Travels, Hakluyt Ed. I. 92), resolved to go with the káfila since the insecurity of the ways did not allow him to go alone. Still at that time Gujarát as a whole (see above page [220 note 2]) was an exceeding rich province, a description which twenty years later (1638) is borne out by Mandelslo (Travels, French Edition, 56): No province in India is more fertile; none yields more fruit or victuals. With the boast of the author of the Mirăt-i-Áhmedi (a.d. 1756) that Gujarát was the richest province in India compare Kháfi Khan’s (a.d. 1719) remark (Elliot, VII. 530): This rich province which no other province in India can equal. [↑]
[35] Orme’s Historical Fragments, 12. [↑]
[36] The following are some of the notices of Áhmedábád and Cambay by the European travellers of the seventeenth century: Cambay, 1598, trade so great that if he had not seen it he would not have believed it possible (Cæsar Frederick); 1623, indifferent large with sufficiently spacious suburbs and a great concourse of vessels (De la Valle, Hakluyt Edition, I. 66–67); 1638, beyond comparison larger than Surat (Mandelslo, 101–108); 1663–1671, twice as big as Surat (Baldæus in Churchill, III. 506). Áhmedábád, 1598, a very great city and populous (Cæsar Frederick); 1623, competently large with great suburbs, a goodly and great city, with large fair and straight but sadly dusty streets (De la Valle, Hakluyt Edition, I. 95); 1627, large and beautiful with many broad and comely streets, a rich and uniform bazár, and shops redundant with gums perfumes spices silks cottons and calicoes (Herbert’s Travels, 3rd Edition, 66); 1638, great manufactures, satin and velvet, silk and cotton (Mandelslo, 80); 1695, the greatest city in India, nothing inferior to Venice for rich silks and gold stuffs (Gemelli Careri in Churchill, IV. 188). [↑]
[38] The usual explanation of toda garás is the word toda meaning the beam-end above each house door. The sense being that it was a levy exacted from every house in the village. A more likely derivation is toda a heap or money-bag with the sense of a ready-money levy. Toda differed from vol in being exacted from the garás or land once the property of the levier’s ancestors. [↑]