Explain the strengths and limitations of Ain-i-Akbari.
Answers
Explanation:
Ain-i-Akbari was a culmination of large historical, administrative project written by Abu’l Fazl on Akbar's orders. It was completed 1598, the forty second years of Akbar’s reign.
Its strengths includes:
• It was a culmination of five books. The first two books gives us the historical perspective of Akbar’s court.
• The third book gives detailed information about the administration of court and the army.
• The Ain gives us the detailed view of Akbar’s court. It showed it as a place of religious diversity where many Jains, Buddhists and Hindus were part of the court.
• It showed the traditions and culture of the people. It also, gives the account of literacy among people.
• It gives the intricate quantitative information about the various provinces of the empire.
Its limitations were:
• The Ain gives a skewed nature of the quantitative data as data were not collected from every province.
• Because the data were not compiled for every province, the data about caste composition of Bengal and Orissa are not available.
• Even though the fiscal data for the subas is remarkable, but some of the vital parameters like wages and prices from some areas were not well-documented.
• A lot of numerical error have been found in it due to arithmetic slip ups by Abu’l Fazl’ s assistants.