Indian Antiquary Vol 51

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

Page 198

190
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[OCTOBER, 1922
The pargana officials were the shiqdar, a military police officer with limited powers, to support the amin or civil head and arbitrator in revenue disputes between the State and the payer of taxes. The amin had for civil subordinates the fotaddr or treasurer and two kärkuns or clerks, one each for Hindi and Persian correspondence. The civil officials were collectively and individually responsible to the Central Government. This requirement prevented corruption and embezzlement.
The Sarkâr was administered by a Chief Shiqdar (the Farjdar of later times) and a Chief Munsif. The Chief Shiqdar was a local grandee with a large military following, whose duty was to keep order, but he was, nevertheless, essentially a superior officer of a civil police. The Chief Munsif looked after the subordinate civil offices and acted as a circuit judge to settle civil suits and redress local grievances. He had no revenue office, all revenue correspondence going direct from the pargana to the Imperial Secretariat.
Beyond the Sarkar, Sher Shâh created no higher administrative unit. He would have no military governors, and as a matter of fact the familiar subahs and súbaddrs of history came later. The nearest he got to the provincial governor of later times was the Qazi Fazihat of Bengal, who was a general referee to weld the administration of the officials of the Bengal sarkárs into a homogeneous whole, without the possession of any military, and with the possession of but little administrative, authority. But like all other rulers, Sher Shah could not always do as he pleased, and the local situation obliged him reluctantly to appoint Haibat Khân Niâzi, Shuja'at Khân and Khawas Khân supreme military governors Iospectively of the Panjab and parts of Malwâ, with an obvious intention to make the appointments temporary.
The upshot of his system of government was the centralisation of all supreme authority in himself, even in details. His ministers were but secretaries, but he heard reports by departments and so laid the foundation of the British Secretariat Departments. He was also his own Finance Minister and superintended his treasury and its accounts himself. His general system was at the bottom of the whole Mughal administrative structure and to this day the District Magistrate and the tahsildar are the lineal descendants of the Chief Shiqdar and his amin. The personal work he performed must have been enormous, but he made it run so smoothly and mechanically, that it did not interfere with his immense military and even architectural and engineering activities. Truly a wonderful man.
In his military administration the trend of Sher Shâh's mind and capacity came out clearly. He followed and improved on 'Alâ'u'ddin Khilji's system (1296-1316), though it had long been lost sight of under his successors, until it disappeared in the clan system of the Lodi Afghans (1451-1526). 'Alâ'u'ddin Khilji recruited his army directly, paid them in cash through his own treasury, officered them himself and branded the horses. His army was an organised imperial foroe and not a mere collection of feudal units. Sher Shah, too, was his own Commander-in-Chief and Paymaster General, and always aimed at putting the soldier into as close touch as possible with himself, keeping recruiting, promotion and salary in his own hands. His Army.Commander was & purely military official with no civil authority except on the frontier; and like all successful Muslim rulers in India, Sher Shah from the beginning gave important military and civil posts to selected Hindus.
It will have been seen from Sher Shah's management of his father's fief, that he had made himself an expert in the collection of revenue. The theory, still in vogue, of all land outside the towns being the property of the monarch had existed at the outset of Muslim rule in India, and it was 'Ala'u'ddin Khilji that introduced the idea of survey and assessment, though his innovation did not remain long in effect and degenerated to guess work at the