Note 29 — INDEX (continued 2)

The decrease in the Mughal collections from Gujarát compared with the revenues of the Áhmedábád kings may have been due to Akbar’s moderation. It may also have been due to a decline in prosperity. Compare Roe’s (1617) account of Toda about fifty miles south-east of Ajmír. It was the best and most populous country Roe had seen in India. The district was level with fertile soil abounding in corn cotton and cattle and the villages were so numerous and near together as hardly to exceed a kos from each other. The town was the best built Roe had seen in India tiled two-storied houses good enough for decent shopkeepers. It had been the residence of a Rájput Rája before the conquests of Akbar Sháh and stood at the foot of a good and strong rock about which were many excellent works of hewn stone, well cut, with many tanks arched over with well-turned vaults and large and deep descents to them. Near it was a beautiful grove two miles long and a quarter of a mile broad all planted with mangoes tamarinds and other fruit trees, divided by shady walks and interspersed with little temples and idol altars with many fountains wells and summer houses of carved stone curiously arched so that a poor banished Englishman might have been content to dwell there. This observation may serve universally for the whole country that ruin and devastation operate everywhere. For since the property of all has become vested in the king no person takes care of anything so that in every place the spoil and devastations of war appear and nowhere is anything repaired. Roe in Kerr’s Voyages, IX. 320–321. ↑