100 H. G. Keene— On the Revenues of the Mughul 'Empire. [No. 2, 
hundred and forty thousand. The discrepancy is not fatal, if we suppose 
Nizam-ud-din to have been giving only the land revenue, while Abul Fazl 
added the customs. He adds that Thomas’s estimates are incredible, and 
that the subject is one of great importance; in which every one who thinks 
much about it must agree. 
But extreme and conflicting as are Mr. Thomas’s amounts, there are 
numerous difficulties in the substitute suggested by Mr. Rodgers. In the 
first place there is fair evidence that in the next reign, after Khandes and 
Gujrat had been absorbed in the empire and Todarmal’s settlements had 
borne their fruit, the revenues ran from twelve millions sterling to about 
seventeen and a half. The first may be gathered from the statement of 
Coryat, the wandering Vicar of Odcombe, who was a man of a most inquiring 
disposition, and who gives the detailed account that the revenue (in the 
early years of Jahangir) was “ forty millions of crownes of six shillings 
each.” The second rests upon the testimony of the Badshah namah of a 
contemporary of Shahjahan’s who says that on the demise of the crown 
the revenue was over 18 krors. In the next place, Abul Fazl does not con¬ 
fine his estimate to the 567,63,83,883 dams erroneously given by Mr. 
Rodgers : he gives it in Rupees, and he repeats it in detail as the aggre¬ 
gate of what he calls his taqsim Jamas. In the text of the Ain Akbari 
he says that three Arbs, &c. of dams were equal to Rs. 90,749,881, annas 2 
and pies 5 and the aggregate of the taqsim Jamas, given afterwards, brings 
the total up, with some customs items, to nearly ten krors (9,96,13,850). 
Now whatever else is to be discussed, we shall hardly go wrong in suppos¬ 
ing: that Nizam-ud-din and Abul Fazl both meant the same. Both were 
financial officers of the highest rank, and, as Mr. Rodgers well says, their 
estimates are for two succeeding years, the 39th and 40th of the reign. 
Lastly, there is no sufficient ground for assuming that the dam was worth 
so little as Mr. Rodgers supposes. He arrives at his conclusion by taking 
it as being five times the value of a tanka of which 200 went to the rupee ; 
he says truly enough that forty of these dims were equal to the rupee, 
vide Blochmann’s Ain , p. 31 ; and hence he infers that this brings out his 
estimate of 3 krors 54 lakhs. But it does not do so. Abul Fazl, as we 
have seen, though he preserves the proportion of 40 : 1, says that the land 
revenue in the 40th year was three Arbs , sixty-two krors ninety-seven 
lakhs , fifty-five thousand one hundred and forty-six dams, or Rs. 90,749,881 
which is the estimate in dams divided by forty. 
Thus, then, we see that Mr. Rodgers’ first principle was wrong, and 
we arrive at a second proposition : not only must Abul Fazl and Nizam- 
ud-din mean much the same total, but they express it in different standards. 
The tanka* of the one must bear to the dam of the other some such propor¬ 
tion as that of three hundred and sixty-two to six hundred and forty; or, in 
* It will be seen presently that the word is tanka without the alif. 
