Machine summary:
" The mutasarn] was obviously the head of the revenue administration in the parganah ; 1 bn-Batiitah does not mention the subordinate staff without whose help the mutasarti] could not function.
Let us now examine the parganah administration under Sher Shah For the sake of brevity I will put the relevant evidence in tabular form :- (View the image of this page) (i) The shiqqdiir was the head of the parganah administration.
. From this it is obvious why the terms mun$if and amin came intc existence ; he was a trustee in the sense that it was his duty to see thai the assessment should be fair, and a judge because he was responsible fo: seeing that neither the state nor the cultivator should be the loser in the assessment.
It is in this sense that th~ word has been used, in all probability, on page 287 of the text of the A'in; in the technical sense in which the word was used under Sher Shah it meant an assessment officer.
The text of the A'In will show that the word munsi] was retained for the assessment officer ; he fixed the state demand on the cultivator in view of the area cultivated and the average produce per unit.
This creates a predilection in our mind to accept the view that the word shiqqdar has been used in the Afghan sense of the head of a parganah.
This is in contradiction of Dr. Saran's view that the shiqqdar was the executive head of the parganah and different from the 'amil, who was merely a revenue officer.