1881.] E. Thomas— The revenues of the Mughal Empire in India. 117 
Notes. 
Metre TVdfr , as in No. III. The English follows the original measure, 
save in making the second hemistich catalectic. 
Nuseyb was a negro slave, the property of a man who lived in 
Wadi-l-Qura, not far to the East of el-Medineh. He covenanted with his 
master to buy his freedom (in Freytag’s text, for Jcdnet ( ald nefsihi , read 
Teat aha l ala nefsihi ), and having done so, repaired to the Khalifeh ‘Abd-el- 
£ Aziz ibn Merwan, whom he praised in an ode. In requital therefor 
£ Abd-el-‘Aziz gave him the purchase money wherewith to redeem himself, 
and gifts besides. He excelled in erotic and laudatory poetry. 
v. 2. “ A Qata.” The Qata is the sand-grouse, a well-known bird 
of the Arabian Deserts, constantly recurring in old Arab poetry, and the 
subject of innumerable proverbial sayings. 
The revenues of the Mughal Empire in India.—Eg Edward 
Thomas, E. R. S., late Bengal 0. IS, 
Indian Numismatists are greatly indebted to Mr. C. J. Rodgers of 
Amritsar for his contributions of coins “ supplementary to the Chronicles 
of the Pathan Kings of Dehli,’’* and for the careful illustration of the 
new specimens, by his own hand, which have lately appeared in our 
Journal. 
In his last paper in Part I, Yol. XLIX, 1880, p. 213, on the “ Copper 
coins of Akbar,” Mr. Rodgers has entered into some speculations on the 
amount of the State Revenue of that monarch, based upon novel inter¬ 
pretations of the legends on the coins he describes, which seem to me to 
be open to criticism. I am the more bound to notice these readings and 
the deductions involved, as they touch a subject of much importance in 
the Fiscal history of India, which I have endeavoured to elucidate in a 
separate publication on the “ Revenue resources of the Mughal Empire.”t 
I cannot claim that this work was received with much favour, on its 
first appearance, the returns contrasted so strikingly with the lesser totals 
obtained from the land in our day, that there was an intuitive tendency 
to suspect errors in my figures and calculations. J However, as Mr. W. W. 
* Triibner, London, 1871, 8vo., pp. xxiv. 467. 
f Triibner, London, 1871, 8vo., pp. 54. 
X Sir H. Elliot, one of our most experienced Settlement Officers under Martin 
Bird, in his investigation into the revenues past and recent of the province of Sind, 
was equally startled to find how little the British Government obtained from that 
fertile land, in comparison with the income of their Native predecessors. He remarks 
(p. 473, Yol. I, Dowson’s Edit. Historians of India) “ Under the Talpurs * * Sind is 
said to have occasionally yielded £400,000 ; and under the Kalhoras, tradition re¬ 
presents the revenue at the exaggerated amount of £800,000. At present (A. D. 1855), 
with security on all its borders, and tranquililty within them, it does not pay to the 
British Government more than £300,000, and the expenses have hitherto been double 
that sum.” 
