230 Translations from the Tarihh i Firuzshahi. [No. 3, 
again did Sultan Ghiasauddin Tughluq Shah, being a wise and 
prudent king, order that the collectors of the revenue and the 
governors should make enquiry, and should forbid the head men 
to take more from the people than the revenue demanded by the 
king ; for if their own lands and pastures are not brought under 
the tax, the produce of their lands should suffice for their support, 
and they also abstain from extortion. For of a truth there is 
placed upon the neck of the head men a burden, so that if they also 
are compelled to pay the tax which is paid by others, there is left 
to them no recompense. Those whom he had raised to honour 
and whom he had entrusted with provinces and territories, he 
would in no wise allow to be brought before his ministers, like 
tax-gatherers. Nor would he allow payment to be taken from 
them with indignity and harshness, as is the manner with tax- 
gatherers ; but commanded them, if they did not wish that they 
should be brought before the Council, and be harshly entreated in 
the matter of payment, to the disgrace of the kingdom and the 
discredit of the nobles, that they should refrain from covetousness 
and extortion within their own provinces, taking only what is 
reasonable, and of that also apportioning a certain amount as 
salaries to their servants, being careful never to keep back a single 
coin of the just pay of their soldiers and servants. And if they should 
give of their own revenues to their soldiers and servants, well and 
good; but to keep back that which is their due, is to bring the 
name of the nobles of the empire to disgrace and to shame. For 
the governor who consumes the pay of his servants consumes dirt. 
But if it were needful, the maliks and the princes should take for 
themselves from the revenue of their provinces, a twentieth or 
twenty-second, or a tenth, or a fifteenth, taking this as the dues of 
their government : for in this they should not be discouraged, nor 
is it for the Council of the Empire to demand from them 
the repayment of such sums. So also if the servants of the 
governors of the provinces should take a fifth thousand or tenth 
thousand besides their pay, for such small sums they should not 
be treated with disgrace, or payment be re-demanded from them 
with beating, torture, or imprisonment. But those who are 
deceitful and falsify their accounts, and fraudulently purloin the re- 
