Consider the following statements: 1. Under Akbar, the system of Zabt was established over a large area from Punjab to Awadh. 2. In the seventeenth century North India, the system of Zabt lost much ground to the system of Kankut. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- (a)1 only
- (b)2 only
- (c)Both 1 and 2
- (d)Neither 1 nor 2
Correct — A, 1 only. The first statement is sound: zabt, the measurement-based assessment worked out under Akbar with Todar Mal, was applied across the northern provinces from Lahore through Delhi and Agra to Allahabad, taking in Punjab and Awadh, and was extended to Malwa and Gujarat. Land was measured, a ten-year average of yields and prices produced a cash demand for each crop in each locality, and the schedule was fixed in advance. The second statement fails on its named system. Kankut is an older estimating method — kan for grain and kut for estimate, a rough eye assessment of the standing crop — and it belongs to the repertoire that zabt improved upon, not to anything that displaced it. The method that spread across seventeenth-century north India was nasaq, an assessment made from past revenue records without fresh measurement.
- (b)2 only — Rejects the true statement and accepts the false one. Zabt's northern spread is one of the securest facts about Mughal revenue administration.
- (c)Both 1 and 2 — Accepts the wrong system. Something did erode zabt's reach in the seventeenth century, but it was nasaq, worked from earlier records, rather than kankut.
- (d)Neither 1 nor 2 — Discards a statement that is accurate. The zabt provinces really did run from Punjab across to Awadh.
Mughal revenue could be assessed in several ways. Ghalla-bakhshi or batai divided the actual crop between the state and the peasant. Kankut estimated the yield of the standing crop by eye and converted it. Zabt measured the land, used a ten-year average of yields and prices to fix a cash demand per bigha for each crop, and announced the schedule in advance — the dahsala arrangement associated with Todar Mal. Nasaq skipped measurement altogether and set the demand from the previous records of a village.
Zabt was demanding to run. It required trained measurers, records of local price levels and revenue circles or dasturs to hold them, so it worked where the administration was dense and settled agriculture was old. Where the machinery thinned, or where a jagirdar changed frequently and had no interest in a long survey, the simpler nasaq took over. Notice that zabt's virtue and its weakness were the same thing: a demand fixed in advance in cash gave the peasant certainty and the state predictability, but it took no account of a bad harvest, whereas crop-sharing did.
- Zabt fixed a cash revenue per unit area for each crop from a ten-year average of yields and prices — the dahsala system associated with Todar Mal.
- It applied across the northern provinces from Lahore to Allahabad and was extended to Malwa and Gujarat.
- Kankut was an older estimate-based method, not a later replacement for zabt.
- Nasaq, an assessment from past records without fresh measurement, gained ground in the seventeenth century.
- Ghalla-bakhshi or batai shared the actual harvest between the state and the cultivator.
The second statement in the question is right about the direction of change and wrong about which system gained.
- Treating kankut and nasaq as interchangeable; one estimates the crop, the other copies old records.
- Assuming zabt covered the whole empire; the Deccan and Bengal were assessed differently.
- Crediting the system to Todar Mal alone when it took shape over a decade of experiment.
A two-statement item where the false half is built by swapping one technical term for another from the same family.
Consider the following : 1. Assessment of land revenue on the basis of nature of the soil and the quality of crops 2. Use of mobile cannons in warfare 3. Cultivation of tobacco and red chillies Which of the above was/were introduced into India by the English?
- (a) 1 only
- (b) 1 and 2
- (c) 2 and 3
- (d) None
Answer(d) None
Its first item is this very system, and the answer turns on recognising it. Assessment by the nature of the soil and the quality of the crop was Mughal practice long before the English arrived, which is why the code is 'None'.
Which one among the following statements about the Mansabdari system is correct ?
- (a) All army troopers were allotted mansabs.
- (b) Mansabs were usually assigned on the basis of ancestry.
- (c) Position and salary of mansabdars were indicated by a numerical designation called zat.
- (d) Mansabdars were never paid in cash.
Answer(c) Position and salary of mansabdars were indicated by a numerical designation called zat.
The spending side of the same administration. Revenue assessed under zabt paid the mansabdars, whose rank and salary were expressed in the zat number, so the two systems are two halves of one fiscal machine.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The dahsala system of revenue assessment was based on
- (a)an annual division of the harvest
- (b)a ten-year average of yields and prices
- (c)an eye estimate of the standing crop
- (d)the previous year's collection
Answer(b) a ten-year average of yields and prices — used to fix a cash demand per unit area.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Under which method was the revenue demand fixed from past records without a fresh measurement of land?
- (a)Zabt
- (b)Kankut
- (c)Nasaq
- (d)Batai
Answer(c) Nasaq — which spread widely in the seventeenth century.