Transcript for:
Understanding Jagir and Mansabdar Systems

[Music] in our last two programs we had seen the manari system a mansabdar as we had seen was a rankholder this system developed during the hey days of the mugal rule Akbar refined and perfected the system by giving two numbers to the mansabdars one the zat which defined his position in court and the other the SA which indicated the Cavalry at his command the salaries of these officials were paid mostly from the revenue they could gather from the land assigned to them this Revenue came to be known as jagir today we shall see the jagari [Music] system jagar system and the mansari system complement each other one cannot function without the other both are the measures or in other words instruments of mobilizing the resources of the country and distributing among the Nobles we have seen in our last lecture on the mon ofar system that a very small percentage of the high Nobles and princess were consuming most of the resources of the country how this is done that would be seen from the jagar system actually jagar system is the assignment of the revenue of the produce of the land the land is never given it is the produce that is allotted or ear marked for the noble to take from this Revenue the salary that is due to him so therefore jagar system is the salary of the Manar but actually it starts after Babar and practically from the time of Akbar babber after his Conquest instituted a different system called waja and the person who gets this waja was called wajar he has distributed onethird of the conquered areas to the new people new Masters or to the old Masters among them the Afghans got a major share and it is stated that under babber Afghans consumed 1th of the total revenue of the mul Empire at that particular time it was after babber that jigit system was introduced there was a fundamental difference between the watar system and the jagid Dari system in the vat system there was no difference between the executive and the financial office under this system an officer was given a territory with a fixed salary he administered the area both financially and from the executive point of view in the jagari system there was no fixed salary and the ex executive and financial Powers were in the hands of different persons but in case of babber perhaps this separation was coming very slowly and gradually because in the kalsa land that is the land managed by the state officials for the state we find that there were executive shik for example and financial officer like the one there were only four examples during the reign of babber of the existence of shikar and the the one in the kalal lands but it was from the time of Akbar that the situation changed drastically and obviously fundamentally the jar had several very serious problems and some of these problems had never been resolved during the time of the mul Empire the first problem was that the jar has to conform to the central rules and regulations that is he must collect the revenue as per sanction rate that is a very serious problem as we shall see in the second problem itself which is linked to the first the second problem which I have briefly hinted during the lecture at manab system that there is a difference between estimate of revenue and the collection of Revenue the ministry makes the estimate of Revenue which is called jamad dami it is called dami because dam is a copper coin and the revenue is estimated in Dum at least till the early days of 17th century yet the ter continues although some after that the estimate is is made in rupees this jamad is therefore the estimate of the revenue to be collected from a particular jiger and the jigar when it collects it it is called har Hil or simply Hil that it collect the revenue the problem comes that this jamad is less than that of the hassil or in other other words the estimate is different from the actual collection and the actual collection is often much less so in case of the jagar the principal problem lies that he cannot get the salary that is due to him there was a third problem the eat from the rabbi crop and that from the car Leaf crop were considered to be equal everywhere except Bengal but that was a wrong supposition since there were vast differences between the two crops and their yield not only in Bengal but elsewhere in the country as well this affected the revenue collection but there is also another problem very serious problem for the jagar the jagar is transferable he is transferred after on an average every 3 years now if he's transferred in the middle of the Season then the question of the collection of Revenue comes who will collect it the old jagar or the new jagar the ministry has made elaborate rules elaborate procedures of such collections but then both the Jag does the old and the new must conform to that kind of procedure must conform to the rules that are to be followed in practice this is very rarely done and this leads to terrible difficulties long correspondences with the ministry and so on and so forth so the jar if we think from an external point of view seems to be in a very happy position with high standard of living but he has very many real [Music] [Music] problems there are four different kinds of jagirs jagir Tanga mashu jagir inam jagir and Wan jagir each had a different type of function and revenue structure let us see the characteristics of each of these first let us take the jagiri Tanga or the rupy jagir this is the jagir about which we are talking about granted to the mansabdar in Li of his salary to collect from the revenue of the produce of the jaet in India the tax or the revenue is never on the land during the mol period it was the British who started it in India during the medieval period it was always the revenue of the produce of the land if there is no produce there is no tax now the jairi Tanga therefore is the normal J that we are talking about and this T is given to the manab in of the salary besides this the second type of J is called Mash jer masut jer is a temporary Jer given to a particular person for a very temporary period when a mansabdar is appointed to a high post with high obligations he has to maintain a large number of Cavalry in that case the mansabdar gets what is known as the mash jar a temporary jar for a temporary period once he is transferred from that post he does not get the jigar at all the third one which is called the inam is generally given to the religious people for charity and this inam J is generally for the life of the person concerned he has no rank that is no zat rank no Saar Rank and no military obligation at all and in most of the cases it ISE free of tax no taxes to be given by him jangid in his Memoirs had given a large number of cases which he had granted as enam Jes as we shall see later on some officials of The Villages were also given the inam jits but it is generally given to the religious people the last one the fourth one is called w w is that that is Aid or a Raja when he is absorbed into the manari system that is he when he made a manab he's given a Tanga that is J Tanga and hisari is considered w this V is a hereditary one it requires the Imperial sad for succession and it continues in the family for very long time except in one or two cases in 1679 AR did not give the succession to jur and converted jur into a Kalisa there was violent demonstration of the jur people revolts etc etc now this Wan is therefore the jar given for life as well as to the succession provided there is an imperial son and therefore it is not transferable it cannot be transferred maning for example under Akbar when he was a Manar he had two Jags one jiri Tanga in Hisar near Punjab and his Wan was inur so therefore the Jes are of various types and here we deal mostly with the T since Wan will be discussed by us later in the lecture on the Jamar system now did has certain rights these rights are embodied in the order of the given at the time of the assignment it is very clearly written his principal functions are two one is to collect the revenue in Le of his salary and two administer the J if there is a problem in the J if there is a Revolt he can call upon the F to help him and normally the F helps him but there are these two principle rights of the in which the collection of the revenue is the most important one now in case of the jar when he comes as a new person there are problems for him first of all he does not know the area the locality Etc then he does not know the tradition and customs and therefore the jar faces certain problems but to recount these problems and how the ministry tries to solve it we shall see immediately after looking at the the revenue of the jagar the unfortunately the records are not available to us nothing has been found so far excepting in one or two small cases but the khisa records that is the land managed by the state officials for the state these records are available and it is more or less presumed and accepted now that the model follows the model of the kalish now gets revenue or the Rue is assigned to him this revenue is divided into various kinds of units called Mahal ml the Mahal is a unit of a revenue these M mahals differ from one place to another so the jar may get 30 mahals in one place in another place with the same salary he may get 10 it all depends along with that there are certain other taxes which are considered as separate mahs and separate jaggies a tax was charged at the ports on most of the goods it was called custom duty the revenue from custom duty was considered to be a separate Mahal of the jaid let us take some examples of this kind of mahals one can easily give many instances I'll give only two the custom duties of the port of Surat was given by shajahan first to his son Prince parv but parv died soon after and after the death of parves this was given to Janar beam daughter of shajahan it is stated that this was given for her B expenses P expenses we have another instance closure at home in hugly the port duty of hugly Port was a j of Shan who was the subad of Bengal so therefore these Duties are often consider Ed as separate units and given similarly excise or other taxes which in mul technical terms particularly from the 17th century called ABAB these aabs are often considered but not always considered as separate units and separate gigis now in the rights of the jagar we have a very interesting F or order given by AR in 1666 to an official in Gujarat whose name was roshik Das he was a Kori ofat in charge of the revenue now AR's farman very clearly says that the jar has all the rights it is understood but he cannot collect more than 50% of the land Revenue that is the revenue of the land it must be less than 50% also the fman says that the jagar should not and would not be allowed to collect taxes which are not permitted by the central government now the letter historian kafi Khan who wrote after the death of Arab stated that the Jas did not follow the second order and no punishment was given to him now one of the reasons of this kind of Oppression if one likes to say it that way is that the jagar faces plenty of difficulties as I have explained and to solve this problem the central government has made an administrative Arrangement under the mul Empire the jits had a very aborate administrative setup basically it consisted of three tier contingent of officials posted at the jagir itself they are the staff of the jagid DAR the local staff and the Imperial staff again the Imperial staff contingent was further subdivided into subar forars and so on so first we see the staff of the jagar now in case of thear administration we must divide theas into two types one is a bigger J and other is a smaller J the reason of this division is because the system of administration of the J depends on the size of the Jag a bigger jagar has a large number of officials modeled on the staff pattern of the KSA and naturally they are far more efficient and they could collect the revenue also in case of a smaller jagar he did not have the resources to appoint a large number of officials his officials are mainly two one is called Amil who is in charge of the revenue so to speak and the other is fedar or the treasurer the man in charge of Finance so Amil is in charge of the jig itself and fed is in charge of the finance so for this m jagar these are the two principal officials to look after the jar so what happens is particularly from the late 17th century when wars were going on in rajputana and Maharashtra the smaller jagas used to give contracts of the collection of Revenue to certain people particularly some of his own troops and also to marchants this is called EA System and thisa system is the system or a kind of a contract by which the collection of the revenue is made now from the time of shajahan this iara system increased more or less before for that we very find very rare instance of the Yara system now this is the staff of the jagar and as I have said in brief that the bigger jagar had larger number of officials na Guma Amil fadar PES Soldiers the second one the local staff who are unaffected by the transfer are generally two one is the kanungo and the other is the chor kanungo is a post for life and it is herat but the succession would need an imperial s that is an imperial order he may be removed only by the Imperial order the task of the kanungo is very simple he is actually The Record Keeper of the Parana he keeps the record all kinds of Statistics the area the kind of produce different kind of land number of people the rate of the revenue the sanction rate the prices market prices and so on so forth so he's the repository of the information of the government so to speak actually he is a government official in the early days of Akbar he used to get a remuneration of 1th of the collection of Revenue but in the later days of Akbar it was changed to a fixed salary but after Akbar it has been seen that this fixed salary along with it some enam jir is add it so so therefore the kanungo who is the most important person because he is the person who informs the jagar of the local traditions and Customs so next day we said see the Chui and then the last year the Imperial officials after which we shall see the crisis of the [Music] h h [Music]