Mughal Revenue System

Abstract

Dahsala or Mughal Revenue System is an Indian system of land taxation which was introduced in A.D. 1580 under the reign of Akbar. This system was introduced by the finance minister of Akbar, Raja Todar Mal, who was appointed in A.D. 1573 in Gujarat, and it helped to make the system of tax collection from non-muslims more organized. Before the Dahsala system was established the system was disorganised and was in a chaotic form. There were number of reasons for this, one is that the most of the land was owned by wealthy and big landlords and jagirdars (King's officials who were gifted land by the King) who collected their own land revenue and kept majority of the collection and would give the rest to the government which meant that the government would incur big losses.

Another reason is that land owned by the government was unable to meet the expenses of the state. Therefore, this meant that the government had hardship in maintaining these lands.

Further one of the main reasons for the failure of previous land revenue system is that the cultivators of the land did not know the type of the land they owned, how it is measured, how much they had to pay in terms of cash if they wanted to pay in cash instead of produce.

These reasons meant that the government and the cultivators would lose in turn made the people lose out too.

There were three systems during this period, Dahsala system (also known as the Zabiti system), Nasaq and Galla-bakshi.