32 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [N.S., XII, 



tions of the rnahal names, while some smaller subdivisions of 

 the Dandapatas were turned into separate mahals. 



The ignorance of the fact 1 that the mahals of the Ain were 

 a further development of the Hindu fiscal divisions, has now 

 and then led to mistaken remarks, for example, by Beames. 

 Furthermore, the want of knowledge of the old Hindu names 

 has prevented a satisfactory checking of the names in the Ain, 

 whose manuscripts show a lamentably corrupt state of preser- 



vation in addition to the actual difficulty of transcribing the 



vernacular names correctly in the Persian. The names of the 

 fiscal divisions have since then changed greatly, and as their 

 knowledge is now more or less disappearing, the difficulty of 

 their identification with modern divisions can be well ima- 

 gined. 



Before proceeding to identify the mahals, it is better to 



give here some account of the fiscal changes introduced by the 

 Musalmans. Orisa was one of the provinces conquered very late 

 by the Musalmans. The northern part up to the Cilka Lake 

 was conquered by the army of the Bengal Sultan Sulaiman Kara- 

 rani in 1568-9 a.d. The southern part was invaded and the 

 greater portion of it occupied by the forces of the Golkonda 

 Sultan, Ibrahim Kutb Shah, in 1571 a.d. By the time of 

 compiling the Ain the Musalmans had thus been in possession for 

 only a quarter of a century, and that possession, too, was very 

 much disturbed and partial owing to the continual fights be- 

 tween the Afghans and Mu glials. The Musalmans had thus little 

 time and less leisure to make radical changes, a fact that ex- 

 plains the general retention of the old Hindu subdivisions, 

 both in name and in extent. 



The next important change in Todar MaPs rent-roll was 

 made seventy years later, during the second viceroyalty of the 

 Prince Shah Sujah (1646-58 a.d.)- Orisa which had been ad- 

 ministered by a separate governor, generally appointed direct 

 from Delhi, had been then added to the prince's viceroyalty of 

 Bengal. In his time Orisa was rearranged into three groups of 

 four sarkars each, or twelve sarkars and 276 mahals (Grant, 

 p. 527). Of these the northernmost six sarkars were dismem- 

 bered from Orissa and annexed to Bengal. The main reason 

 for this change was said to be to protect the growing port of 

 Balasore and its sea-coast against the ravages of the Arra- 



canese (G., p. 246). 



The next great change was introduced in the ■ perfect ' 



rent-roll of Murshid Kuli Khan (1722 a.d.). He changed the 



general name, mahal, into pargana, and for the khalsa portion 



added an administrative division higher than sarkars, the 



caklas. The northern sarkars which had been annexed to 



Bengal in the time of Shah Sujah were placed under two 



caklas, Bandar Balasore (17 parganas), and Hijli (35 parganas) 



besides the zamindari of Tamluk (G., p. 253). 



