Meera, a research student in Delhi, is studying the lives of cultivators in the Mughal empire. In the archives she looks for diaries or letters written by the cultivators themselves and finds none. Her supervisor gives her a famous chronicle by a historian at the emperor's court. It describes in great detail how the state arranged for cultivation, collected revenue and dealt with the rural magnates. He tells her to read it with care. He also asks her to look for other records kept in regions far from the capital, some of them by a foreign trading company.
The detailed revenue records that can supplement the chronicle come mainly from which regions?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan
Option (1) Bengal, Bihar and Assam — Incorrect. Eastern India is known mainly through the extensive records of the East India Company. The detailed revenue records come from other regions.
Option (2) Malwa, Khandesh and the Deccan — Incorrect. These lay away from the capital as well, but the regional revenue records come from Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan.
Option (3) Punjab, Kashmir and Sind — Incorrect. These were Mughal provinces too, but they are not the regions whose revenue records supplement the Ain.
Option (4) Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan — Correct. The detailed revenue records of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries come from Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, regions away from the Mughal capital.
NCERT (2026-27): “1.1 Looking for sources … |