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 di