“without the slightest sign of fear of defilement” to open his mouth in order that the tax collector might spit in it if he wished to do so.[11] This was much more than a disgusting humiliation.  When the tax-collector availed himself of this privilege the Hindu lost thereby his greatest possession, his caste, and was shut out from any intercourse with his equals.  Accordingly he was compelled to pass his whole life trembling in terror before this horrible evil which threatened him.  That a man of Akbar’s nobility of character should remove such an atrocious, yes devilish, decree seems to us a matter of course; but for the Hindus it was an enormous beneficence.

  [Footnote 11:  Noer, II, 6, 7; G.B.  Malleson, 174, 175.]

Akbar sought also to advance trade and commerce in every possible way.  He regulated the harbor and toll duties, removed the oppressive taxes on cattle, trees, grain and other produce as well as the customary fees of subjects at every possible appointment or office.  In the year 1574 it was decreed that the loss which agriculture suffered by the passage of royal troops through the fields should be carefully calculated and scrupulously replaced.

Besides these practical regulations for the advancement of the material welfare, Akbar’s efforts for the ethical uplift of his subjects are noteworthy.  Drunkenness and debauchery were punished and he sought to restrain prostitution by confining dancing girls and abandoned women in one quarter set apart for them outside of his residence which received the name aitanpura or “Devil’s City."[12]

  [Footnote 12:  J.T.  Wheeler, IV, I, 173; Noer, I, 438 n.]

The existing corruption in the finance and customs department was abolished by means of a complicated and punctilious system of supervision (the bureaus of receipts and expenditures were kept entirely separated from each other in the treasury department,) and Akbar himself carefully examined the accounts handed in each month from every district, just as he gave his personal attention with tireless industry and painstaking care to every detail in the widely ramified domain of the administration of government.  Moreover the Emperor was fortunate in having at the head of the finance department a prudent, energetic, perfectly honorable and incorruptible man, the Hindu Todar Mal, who without possessing the title of vizier or minister of state had assumed all the functions of such an office.

It is easily understood that many of the higher tax officials did not grasp the sudden break of a new day but continued to oppress and impoverish the peasants in the traditional way, but the system established by Akbar succeeded admirably and soon brought all such transgressions to light.  Todar Mal held a firm rein, and by throwing hundreds of these faithless officers into prison and by making ample use of bastinado and torture, spread abroad such a wholesome terror that Akbar’s reforms were soon victorious.