Which of the following is NOT correctly matched ?

Question

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Correct — D, 'Jarib — A type of tax' is the wrong pair. The jarib was not a tax at all: it was the measuring rod, or chain, used to survey agricultural land, and by extension the unit of area obtained from that survey. Land measurement was the foundation of Akbar's zabt system, because revenue was assessed on measured area under each crop. The earlier practice of measuring with a hempen rope (tanab) was unreliable — the rope stretched when wet and shrank when dry, so the same field measured differently in different seasons and the assessment could be manipulated. Akbar's administration replaced it with a jarib made of bamboo lengths joined by iron rings, which held a constant length whatever the weather, and standardised the linear unit as the Ilahi gaz, with the bigha defined as 3,600 square Ilahi gaz. So the jarib belongs to the vocabulary of survey and measurement, not to the vocabulary of taxation — which is why it is the odd pair out. The other three are correctly matched: the dam was the copper coin of the Sher Shahi and Mughal currency system, the desai was a hereditary local revenue collector, and the diwan headed the revenue establishment of a province.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Correctly matched, so it cannot be the answer. The dam was the copper coin of the currency system Sher Shah Suri put in place and the Mughals continued, alongside the silver rupiya and the gold ashrafi or mohur. Under Akbar forty dams made one rupaya, and the revenue figures recorded in the Ain-i-Akbari are stated in dams.  (b) Correctly matched. The desai — like the deshmukh of the Deccan — was a hereditary local revenue official in Gujarat and the Deccan who collected the state's demand from a defined tract and kept a customary share for himself. The office was so entrenched that it survives today as a common surname.  (c) Correctly matched. Under Mughal provincial administration the diwan headed revenue and finance in the suba. Crucially he was appointed by, and reported to, the imperial diwan at the centre rather than to the subadar — a deliberate separation of the purse from the sword designed to keep provincial governors in check.

Concept: Medieval Indian revenue vocabulary mixes three different kinds of words: coins (dam, rupiya, tanka, ashrafi), officers (diwan, desai, deshmukh, amil, qanungo, patwari) and instruments or units of measurement (jarib, gaz, bigha, tanab). Exam questions on this theme are usually solved by spotting a term that has been pushed into the wrong category, not by knowing an obscure detail. Akbar's revenue system — the zabt or dahsala bandobast associated with Raja Todar Mal — rested on measured land, a ten-year average of crop prices and yields, and a cash demand fixed per bigha for each crop, which is why standardised measurement mattered so much.

State PCS 2019 Q52 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2019 Q52 — History PYQ with Answer