Note 13 — INTRODUCTION.

Assigned Lands.Akbar continued the system of assigning lands to military leaders in payment of their contingents of troops. Immediately after the annexation in a.d. 1573, almost the whole country was divided among the great nobles.13 Except that the revenues of certain tracts were Introduction. Under the Mughals, a.d. 1573–1760. Assigned Lands. set aside for the imperial exchequer the directly governed districts passed into the hands of military leaders who employed their own agents to collect the revenue. During the seventeenth century the practice of submitting a yearly record of their revenues, and the power of the viceroy to bring them to account for misgovernment, exercised a check on the management of the military leaders. And during this time a yearly surplus revenue of £600,000 (Rs. 60,00,000) from the assigned and crown lands was on an average forwarded from Gujarát to Dehli. In the eighteenth century the decay of the viceroy’s authority was accompanied by the gradually increased power of the military leaders in possession of assigned districts, till finally, as in the case of the Nawábs of Broach and Surat, they openly claimed the position of independent rulers.14