Arrange the Mughal administrative units from the largest to the smallest.

The correct answer is D, the army department. The Mir Bakhshi was the head of the military establishment: he kept the muster rolls of the mansabdars, verified the horses and men at inspection, recommended candidates for rank and countersigned their pay orders, and the news writers and intelligence reporters of the provinces also sent their reports through his office. A, the karkhanas or royal workshops, came under the Mir Saman, who looked after the imperial household. B, revenue and finance, was the charge of the Wazir or Diwan-i-Ala, and that is the option most often chosen by mistake. C was headed by the chief qazi, while religious grants and charity were with the Sadr-us-Sudur. Hold the pair in memory as bakhshi for the sword and diwan for the purse, and the option can never confuse you.

The correct answer is A, statements (A) and (B) are true. The Ain-i-Akbari was written by Abul Fazl, the courtier and friend of Akbar, and it forms the third volume of the Akbarnama; it is an administrative gazetteer, listing departments and officers, the subas with their sarkars and parganas, measured areas, revenue rates, prices and wages, which is why historians use it for economic history. Statement (C) is false for this volume: the ancestry and early life of Akbar are dealt with in the first volume of the Akbarnama, not in the Ain. Hence B, C and D, each of which treats statement (C) as true, are wrong. The Akbarnama in three volumes, with the Ain as the third, is itself a fact worth carrying into the exam hall.

The correct answer is A, personal pay and rank, and the number of horsemen to be maintained. The zat number fixed the salary of the holder and his place in the order of precedence at court, while the sawar number fixed the contingent of cavalry he had to keep ready for the emperor. If the sawar rank equalled the zat the holder was of the first class, if it was half or more of the zat he was of the second, and below that of the third. B describes the jagir records kept by the revenue department, not the mansab. C invents a measure that never existed in the system. D confuses the mansab with the revenue schedule of the dahsala settlement. The mansab was also neither hereditary nor permanent, and it lapsed to the state on the death of the holder.

The correct answer is A, Raja Todar Mal, who had learnt revenue work under Sher Shah and rose to be the revenue minister of Akbar. Under his settlement the average produce and the average price of the previous ten years were calculated for every crop in every locality, the demand was fixed at about one-third of that average produce and stated in cash per bigha, and land was measured with the bamboo jarib and the ilahi gaz. B was a leading Rajput noble and commander of Akbar, not a revenue officer. C wrote the Ain-i-Akbari in which the settlement is described, which makes him a plausible but wrong choice. D was an earlier finance officer of the reign who held office before the dahsala was framed.

The correct answer is B, the branding of horses and the descriptive roll of soldiers. Mansabdars were paid for the troopers they maintained, and the standing temptation was to hire horses and men for the day of inspection and send them away afterwards. Akbar therefore ordered that every horse accepted at muster be branded with the imperial mark, the dagh, and that a written description of each soldier, the chehra, be kept in the office of the Mir Bakhshi, so that the same animals and men could not be shown twice. A is wrong because jagirs were tankha, mashrut, in-am and watan. C and D name no such terms in the records of the period. The two measures together made the Mughal muster the most closely checked military roll of its age in India.