Explain the strengths and limitations of Ain-i-Akbari.

OR

Explain the role of Panchayats in the Mughal rural society.

Ain-i-Akbari was a culmination of large historical, administrative project written by Abu’l Fazl on Akbar's orders. It was completed 1598, the forty second years of Akbar’s reign.

Its strengths includes:

• It was a culmination of five books. The first two books gives us the historical perspective of Akbar’s court.

• The third book gives detailed information about the administration of court and the army.

• The Ain gives us the detailed view of Akbar’s court. It showed it as a place of religious diversity where many Jains, Buddhists and Hindus were part of the court.

• It showed the traditions and culture of the people. It also, gives the account of literacy among people.

• It gives the intricate quantitative information about the various provinces of the empire.

Its limitations were:

• The Ain gives a skewed nature of the quantitative data as data were not collected from every province.

• Because the data were not compiled for every province, the data about caste composition of Bengal and Orissa are not available.

• Even though the fiscal data for the subas is remarkable, but some of the vital parameters like wages and prices from some areas were not well-documented.

• A lot of numerical error have been found in it due to arithmetic slip ups by Abu’l Fazl’ s assistants.

OR

The village community in Mughal rural society comprises of three constituents: cultivators, the panchayat and the village headman. The village panchayat consisted of important village elders with hereditary rights over their properties.

In villages with mixed-caste communities the panchayat consisted of member from every caste and communities. And the decisions made by the panchayat were binding for every member. The panchayat headman called muqaddam and mandal was selected from the elders of the village and he held the office for as long as he can and his role was to supervise the preparation of village accounts, assisted by the accountant of the village.

The panchayat derived its funds by collecting contributions made by individuals. These funds for used for entertaining revenue officers when they visited from time to time and for sometimes to recover from natural calamities. One of the functions of Panchayat was to see that the caste boundaries among various communities was being upheld. They also, had the authority to levy fines for inflict serious punishments for expulsion from the communities. The village panchayat was regarded as a court, where it solved conflicts between lower-caste peasants and officials this ensured that the state carries out its moral obligations and guaranteed justice.