Indian Antiquary Vol 51

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 197

OCTOBER, 1922)
A NEW VIEW OF SHER SHAH SUR
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they could be picked up and delivered to MÅldev. This was done by an agent and MAlder could not be persuaded that there had been no treachery, and consequently fled to Jodhpur.
Sher Shah entered Ajmer and overran Mârwar to Mt. Abu (a fact discovered by Professor Qanungo), manoeuvred Maldev out of Jodhpur at last, and left him in peace safely at Siwand. He then returned to Agra for a short while for a peculiarly Indian reason, viz., to show that he was alive, as owing to the incurable credulity of the Indian public, rumours as to his death in the Rajputana deserta had become current and were gaining too much ground. He then returned to Rajputând, took Chitor and overran Mewar in the course of a sort of triumphant march. He upset no local chiefs and reduod none to real subjection, but satisfied himself with proving his irrosistible might, and so kept them in order by holding all the strategical positions and the lines of communication, and thus incidentally isolating the chiefs and preventing combinations.
He next turned his attention to Bundelkhand and the freebooting Bundela Rajputs, commencing a siege of their great fortress of Kalinjar. With his accustomed energy, Sher Shah was taking a personal share in the investment, when be was severely burnt by an accident arising out of the throwing of hand-grenades (huqqa) and was carried to his camp mortally injured. The Afghåns stormed the fort the same day and Sher Shah died in the evening of the 22nd May 1545, in the very hour of victory over the infidels, "the most coveted death of a good Musalman," as Professor Qanungo puts it. He must have been then in his sixtieth year at least.
He left two surviving sons-neither worthy of their father-'Adil Khan Sür, indolent and indifferent and a poor soldier, and Jalal Khân Sür, active, fierce and vindictive, but a good soldier. Jalal Khân naturally succeeded and was soon in Kalinjar. Sher Shah was buried in the magnificent mausoleum he had built in his old home, Sasarâm.
Such is an outline of the career of Sher Shâh Sûr according to the latest research. Now let us see what India owes to him as a monarch. His empire extended over all North India, on the West from the Afghân hills beyond the Indus south of the Himalayas to the hills of Assam on the East, and his main civil achievement was the creation of a definitely organised administration built up in recognised grades of authority from the bottom upwards, which kept even provincial governors-let alone all below them-directly subordinate to the central authority. It also effectually prevented any local personage from independently controlling the life of the villager-from being in fact his "Providence" (ma-båp)-a relation between peasant and official which has lasted so long in India that the feeling is still de great force in the countryside. Sher Shah did not, of course, invent his system out of his inner consciousness. His merit lay in consolidating and making practical what was in embryo in the systems, or rather methods, of various previous rulers.
Sher Shah started his civil administration with the smallest unit he could-the pargana (district). Each pargana consisted of dihi (villages, or perhaps more accurately, townships or parishes) and was a part of a sarkar (division or minor government), which in its turn was under a titular governorship. Each of these units, great or small, was as small as it could be made. Thus he created in the area he ruled 8 titular governorships, 86 divisions and 2467 districts of about 15 townships each. A comparison with the modern administrative divisions and sub-divisions of the same area will show how comparatively small these were. The result was to connect the remotest village by & chain of regular links with the central authority.