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The earliest form of collecting land revenue in India was ghalla-bakhshi or batai. In this system the assessment was made on the basis of real harvest when the crops were still in the fields productivity per bigha of land was assessed by sher shah. It was known as rai and the assessment was made of three different categories of land good middling and bad. Assessment was made on three rais in average. Per bigha of productivity was multiplied with total areas under cultivation. Later demand was put forth as per prices prevalent at the court/camp. Generally these prices were quite high then the existing market prices. Thus it fell heavy upon peasants and they were not satisfied at all. Abul fazl informs is that instead of fixing rai on each harvest Akbar introduced a new system of revenue assessment called zabt system. Under this system a standard schedule was prepared on the basis of average rate sorted out from the last ten years rates. At the same time average of the prevalent prices for the ten years were taken. By commuting these average prices with average yields a final rate of revenue was fixed. The revenue system in uncultivable land areas were known as nabud. Later under shahjahan and Aurangzeb the zabt system further stretched towards Deccan. The other methods which co-existed with zabt are of varied types, like crop sharing in Kashmir, muqtai in Bengal, batai and zabti in rajasthan etc. Different rate of assessment existed under the mughals. The amount of fixed revenue also varied from region to region depending on the fertility of soil and also from harvest to harvest. Under sher shah 1/3 of the produce was standard claim. However Akbar, under zabti demanded almost ½ of the produce as standard. In certain fertile regions of Gujarat the demand was as high as 2/3. However in arid regions it was much lower. The average revenue demand in western rajasthan ranged between 40 and 42.5 percent suggesting it was lower than the mughal territories. In the marwar regions land revenue demand varied as per the nature of crop and season. pargana merta records show that here in the 17^th century proportion fixed on kharif crops was ½ while for rabi different rates for rain irrigated and irrigated lands were in operation. It was 2/5 the on the former and 1/3 of the produce on the lather. In pargana pokhran revenue was fixed at the rate 1/3 of produce while in sanchar assessment was made on the basis of ploughs /Hals known as muqata. As per castes also revenue demand varied. Banias, ghanchi, sabugar kumbhai etc were paying at the rate of 1/3 of the produce while rajputs ¼th and mali’s 1.5th. Here land tax was also imposed on mehtar at the rate of 1/6^th. Thus superior classes were exempted from paying revenues at higher rates. This was the main reason behind the insistence of the mughal emperors, not to convert raiyat kashta into khwud kashta. Though assessment was made individualistically (asamivar) the basic unit of revenue collection was the village. During the medieval period the collection was done at three different levels a) where state was collecting revenue directly employing its own machinery of officials. Such system was in operation in the khalisa territories under the mughals. B) Revenue assignees were permitted to collect the revenue in lieu of their salaries called iqta (under Delhi sultans) and jagir or tuyul (under the mughals). Here revenue assignees were sending their own agents (gumashtas) for collecting revenues. C) In the third category largely come port towns and their hinterlands where altogether a separate system was in operation.