Meera, a research student in Delhi, is studying the lives of cultivators in sixteenth-century north India. In the archives she looks for diaries or letters written by the cultivators themselves and finds none. Her supervisor hands her the Ain-i Akbari and tells her to read it with care when she uses it for village life. He also asks her to look for revenue papers kept in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, and for the records of a foreign trading company in eastern India.
Why did the supervisor ask Meera to read the Ain-i Akbari with care for the lives of cultivators?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → It pictures an empire held together by a strong ruling class, so it shows peasants from the top.
Option (1) It was written by a European visitor to the court, so it often misread the customs of Indian villages. — Incorrect. The author was not a European visitor. Abu'l Fazl was Akbar's own court historian.
Option (2) It was compiled long after Akbar's reign from older papers, so many of its figures are later guesses. — Incorrect. The Ain was written by Abu'l Fazl in Akbar's own reign, at his court. It was finished in Akbar's time, so its figures come from his own administration.
Option (3) It pictures an empire held together by a strong ruling class, so it shows peasants from the top. — Correct. The Ain was written by Akbar's court historian Abu'l Fazl. Its aim was to show an empire where a strong ruling class gave social harmony, and any revolt was bound to fail. So what it records about peasants is a view from the top, and a historian must read it with care.
Option (4) It drew mainly on revenue papers from Bengal, so it tells little about villages in other provinces. — Incorrect. The Ain records the arrangements of the whole Mughal state. Records on agrarian relations in eastern India came from the East India Company.
NCERT (2026-27): “1.1 Looking for sources … “The central purpose of the Ain was to present a vision of Akbar’s empire where social harmony was provided by a strong ruling class. Any revolt or assertion of autonomous power against the Mughal state was, in the eyes of the author of the Ain, predestined to fail. In other words, whatever we learn from the Ain about peasants remains a view from the top.” |