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• The Ain is made up of five books (daftars), of which the first three books describe
the administration of Akbar’s regime. The fourth and fifth books (daftars) deal with
the religious, literary, and cultural traditions of the people and also contain a
collection of Akbar’s ‘auspicious sayings’.
• Despite of its limitations, Ain remains an extra ordinary document of that period.

Other Sources:

• The other sources included revenue records of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan
and extensive records of the East India Company. All these provided us with
useful descriptions of agrarian relations in Eastern India.
• During the Mughal period, pesants were called as raiyat and there were two kinds
of peasants i.e. Khud-Kashta and Pahi-Kashta.
• Khud-Kashta were residents of the village in which they held their lands. Pahi-
Kashta were non-resident cultivators who belonged to some other village and
cultivated lands on contractual basis.
• The constant expansion of agriculture w’as due to the abundance of land,
available labour and the mobility of peasants.
• Monsoons remained the backbone of Indian agriculture, but irrigation project
(digging new canals and repaired old ones) received state support.
• Agriculture was organised around two major seasonal crops, Kharif (autumn) and
the rabi (spring) crops.
• Agriculture in medieval India was not only for subsistence. Mughal state
encouraged peasants to cultivate jins-i-kamil, i.e., perfect crops (cotton, sugar,
etc) for better profit.

Land Revenue System of Mughal Empire:

• Revenue from the land was the economic mainstay of the Mughal empire.
• The office of the diwan, revenue officials and record keeper all became important
for the agricultural domain.
• The land revenue arrangements consisted of two states i.e. first, assessment
(jama) and then actual collection (hasil).
• Both cultivated and cultivable lands were measured in each province.
• At the time of Akbar, lands were divided into polaj, parauti, chachar and banjar.

The Flow of Silver and its Impact on Economy:

• Voyages of discovery and the opening up of the New World resulted in a massive
expansion of Asia’s, particularly India’s trade with Europe.
• The expanding trade brought in huge amounts of silver bullion into Asia to pay for
goods
• procured from India and a large part of that bullion gravitated towards India. This
was good for India as it did not have natural resources of silver.