NCERT Class 12 - Themes in Indian History Part II, Chapter 8

Mansabdari, Jagir and Land Revenue

Mughal government rested on three linked devices - a graded service of mansabdars, payment through jagirs, and a revenue system based on measurement and average prices. Understanding how the three fit together explains both the empire's strength and its crisis.

Central and provincial offices

• The province was a suba under a subadar, with a separate diwan for revenue who reported to the centre - a deliberate check on the governor.
• Below it came the sarkar under a faujdar for law and order, the pargana with its shiqqdar, amil and qanungo, and the village under the muqaddam and patwari.
• The kotwal kept order in towns.

The mansabdari system

• Every officer held a mansab, a rank, expressed in two numbers.
• Zat fixed his personal status, place in the hierarchy and salary.
• Sawar fixed how many horsemen he had to maintain.
• Mansabs were not hereditary - they lapsed on death and were regranted at the emperor's pleasure, which kept the nobility dependent.
• Dagh branding of horses and the chehra descriptive roll, both inherited from earlier practice, were used to check musters.
• The nobility was deliberately mixed - Turani, Irani, Afghan, Rajput, Indian Muslim and Maratha - so that no single group could dominate.

Jagirs

• Most mansabdars were paid not in cash but by a jagir, an assignment of the revenue of a territory.
• The jagirdar had a right to the revenue only, not to the land, and jagirs were transferred frequently so that no officer built a local base.
• Watan jagir was the exception - the ancestral territory of a chief such as a Rajput ruler, which stayed with him.
• Khalisa land was reserved to supply the imperial treasury directly.
• When territory grew faster than good revenue-yielding land, mansabdars had to wait for jagirs and squeezed peasants harder - the jagirdari crisis that historians place at the heart of Mughal decline.

Land revenue systems

• Dahsala or Zabti, organised by Todar Mal around 1580 - land was measured, classified by fertility, and the revenue fixed in cash on the average produce and prices of the previous ten years.
• Land was classed as polaj (cultivated every year), parauti (left fallow briefly), chachar (fallow three or four years) and banjar (long uncultivated).
• Ghalla-bakhshi or batai - actual division of the harvested crop between state and peasant.
• Kankut - estimate of the standing crop rather than measurement.
• Nasaq - assessment based on past revenue records of the area.
• The state's share was normally about one-third, and taqavi loans were advanced for seed and cattle.