Page:History of Aurangzib (based on original sources) Vol 1.djvu/222

192 HISTORY OF AURANGZIB. [CHAP. IX. chain of officers. Everywhere wise amins and honest surveyors were deputed to measure the land, to prepare the record of well marked out holdings (raqba), and to distinguish arable land from rocky soils and water-courses. Where a village had lost its headman (muqaddam), he took care to appoint a new headman from the persons whose character gave the best promise of their readiness to promote cultivation and take sympathetic care of the peasantry. The poorer ryots were granted loans (taqavvi) from the public treasury, for the purchase of cattle, seeds and other needful materials of agriculture, and the advance was recovered at harvest by instalments. In one year he granted loans of forty to fifty thousand rupees to the ryots of Khandesh and Berar for making embankments to impound water for irrigating low-lying lands. To prevent partiality or corruption "this honest and God-fearing diwan often dragged the measuring chain with his own hands" and checked the survey work of his subordinates. By personal inquiry in the fields and villages he won the confidence of the peasantry; he allotted the holdings with care and attention to detail, so that the ryots prospered at the same time that the revenue increased. He had the wisdom to modify his system according to differences of Digitized by Microsoft Ⓡ