Indian Antiquary Vol 52

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Stephen Meredyth Edwardes, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 250

234
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
SEPTEMBER, 1923
during Akbar's reign may have led to the substitution of non-food for food-crops. More. over the ceaseless wars of Akbar created scarcity of food-stuffs. Above all, the assessment of Akbar was pretty heavy. Abu-l-Fazl expressly states that, for purposes of revenue, "the best crops were taken into account every year, and the year of the most abundant harvest accepted." Remissions, if any, were not easy to obtain. Besides, innumerable imposts were levied. To mention one detail, Mr. Oldham has calculated that in the Ghazipur dig. trict, Akbar's assessment worked out at Rs. 2 per acre as against the modern assessment of Rs. 1. 8-0. In Kashmir Akbar took half the crop; the local Sultans previously used to take two-thirds. But the productive power of the soil was then much less than at present. To quote one instance from Mr. S. Srinivasa Raghava Aiyangar's classical Progress of the Madras. Presidency, "While the Ain-i-Akbari rate for rice is 1.338 lbs., the Madras settlement average for the same tract is 1621 lbs. In fine, Akbar's land revenue realised him £20,000,000; while that of the British Government in 1918-19 was 20-9 million pounds." Meanwhile the acreage of cultivation, as Moreland, in his recent work on India at the time of the death of Akbar, points out, has exactly doubled !
Outside the Moghul empire, several famines occurred during the reign of Akbar. In A.D. 1569 in Assam a famine occurred owing to the damage done to crops by a swarm of locusts (E. A. Gait, History of Assam, p. 101). In A.D. 1570 a great famine appears (vide the records of the Jesuit Mission) to have raged on the Tinnevelly coast. Father Henriques, a Portuguese missionary, established famine relief houses, in which 50 persons were daily fed. In A.D. 1677 a famine is recorded in Kutch ; liberal relief in the form of cooked food was distributed widely. In the reign of Ally Shah Chuk in A.D. 1578, a severe famine was experienced in Kashmir, in which many thousands of the inhabitants died (Briggs, History of the Rise of the Muhammadan Power, vol. IV, ch. x, p. 523). In A.D. 1592, in the Sholapur district, a pestilence and famine almost decimated the population (Loveday, History of Indian Famines, p. 165). In A.D. 1600 there was a famine north of the Godavari (Hopkins, India Old and New, p. 237).
The reign of Jahangir was not more free from faminey; but the modern reader looks in vain for any relief measures undertaken by that pleasure-loving monarch to mitigate the borrors of famines which were carrying away thousands of his subjects. A severe famine and pestilence raged in the Punjab (A.D. 1613-15) for two whole years (Loveday, History of Indian Famines). Gujarat and Ahmadabad were visited by a famine in A.D. 1623 ; but the famine was not sovere, and the stores of the country proved sufficient (ibid.). In A.D. 1641 a famine resulting from & very bad outbreak of cattle disease, which made ploughing impossible, broke out in Assam. (E. A. Gait, History of Assam, p. 136 and fol.) A letter of a Jesuit missionary dated A.D. 1622 says that in Madura so severe a famine had raged for some years that numerous corpses of those who had died were left unburied (Madura Gazetteer, p. 50).
A famine of unparalleled severity occurred in the middle of Shah Jahan's reign, and is recorded in the Emperor's chronicles by Abdu'l-Hâmid Lahori, in the Badshah-Nama : (Elliot and Dowson, History of India, vol. VII, p. 24 and fol.) “During the past year (A.D. 1629) no rain had fallen in the territories of the Balaghat, and the drought had been especially severe about Daulatabad. In the present year also there had been a deficiency in the bordering countries and a total want in the Dakhin and Guzerat. The inhabitants of these two countries were reduced to the direst extremity. Life was offered for a loaf, but none would buy ; rank was to be sold for a cake, but none cared for it; the ever bounteous hand was now stretched out to beg for food; and the feet which had always trodden the way of contentment now walked about only in search of sustenance. For a long time dogs' flesh was sold for goats'