220 THE EMPEROR BABAR

large part of his dominions was under very loose con- trol, and the polity of Hindustan under his rule was simply the strong hand of military power. In the more settled regions the lands and towns were parcelled out in fiefs among his officers, or jagirdars, who levied the land-tax from the cultivators, the duties from the mer- chants and shopkeepers, and the poll-tax from the Hindus, and paid fixed contributions in money and mili- SCENE AT AGRA. tary service to the emperor. But the large zamindars, or landholders, were often so powerful that their de- pendence on the crown was little more than nominal, and India was still, as Erskine observes, " rather a congeries of little states under one prince than one regular and uniformly governed kingdom. " The tribes of the fron- tier and hill districts can hardly be said to have sub- mitted in more than form, and in Sind on the west and Bihar on the east the king's writ was lightly regarded. All the different provinces, however, according to a list in Babar's Memoirs, west to east from Bhira and Lahore