148 E. Thomas —The revenues of the Mughal Empire in India. [No. 2, 
Hunter remarked in 1872. # “ Several attempts have been made in India 
to controvert Mr. Thomas’s figures, but so far without success.” And in 
bis latest Lectures on “ England’s work in India,”f the “ Director-General 
of Statistics to the Government of India,” embodies them without question 
in his text, as a basis of comparison with the existing revenues of British 
India, and adds “ indeed, the difficulty of a comparison has arisen not 
from the absence of information in respect to the Mughal revenues, but 
for want of exact statements regarding our own.” 
Mr. Clements Markham, to whom H. M.’s Indian Government en¬ 
trusted the task of compiling the successive Reports on the Indian Surveys, 
in like manner, seems to have fully satisfied himself as to the soundness 
of my data, which he quotes, in all faith, in his special notice of Akbar’s 
fiscal policy. J 
On the other hand, there have been criticisms and contentions enough, 
none of which seem to me to go so thoroughly into the details of a 
complicated subject, as to require more than a passing notice.§ 
I reproduce the general summary of the results obtained by me in 
1871, from various and completely independent sources. 
I have no wish whatever to claim for them finality, but they fall in 
epochally with probabilities, and I shall be the first to welcome any new 
lights, by whomsoever discovered. 
* Orissa. Smith, Elder and Co., 1872, Yol. II, p. 275. . 
f Smith, Elder, 1880, p. 104. 
X Akbar, an Eastern Romance * * * § * with notes and an introductory life of the 
Emperor Akbar by C. R. Markham, C. B., F. R. S. W. H. Allen and Co., 1879, pp. 
xxvi, xxxiii, and 106. 
§ I scarcely know how to reply within reasonable space to Mr. H. G. Keene’s 
criticisms in his “ Turks in India” (Allen, 1879), they are so discursive ; hut, the main 
point of difference between us seems to be the relative reliance to be placed on the 
returns of the Afn-i-Akbarf, as against those of Nizam-ud-dm Ahmad. The former 
were avowedly progressive as new official details came in, and the grand total (in the 
case I examined) did not accord-with, or come-up-to the divisional totals embodied 
in the same schedule ; the method of reckoning was also, to a certain extent, arbitrary, 
i. e., by 40 dams to the rupee, the latter a coin only recently introduced, and whose 
absolute divisional money representative, or J^th in copper , is still a doubtful quantity. 
I may add, with reference to the dam of account, that Prof. Wilson in his Glossary of 
Indian terms, informs us that, the 40 dams to the Rupee of Akbar’s time, came to be 
46jrd under ’Alamgfr and even 80 to 90, at later periods. Whereas, on the other hand, 
Nizam-ud-dm, a master of finance, defined his returns in Sikandari Tankas , the current 
coin in which the Settlement of Sikandar Lodi had been framed. Mr. Keene, at 
p. ix, takes objection to my estimating the rupee at 2 shillings, this was merely done for 
facility of conversion, but every available testimony goes to prove that the exchange 
value of the fine silver rupee was, in those days, far higher than 2/. 
