Explanation:

Our understanding of the workings of rural society of 16th and 17th century does not come from those who worked the land, as peasants did not write about themselves. Our major source for the agrarian history of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries are chronicles and documents from the Mughal court.
One of the most important chronicles was the Ain-i Akbari authored by Akbar’s court historian Abu’l Fazl. This text meticulously recorded the arrangements made by the state to ensure cultivation, to enable the collection of revenue by the agencies of the state and to regulate the relationship between the state and rural magnates, the zamindars. The central purpose of the Ain was to present a vision of Akbar’s empire where social harmony was provided by a strong ruling class. Any revolt or assertion of autonomous power against the Mughal state was, in the eyes of the author of the Ain, predestined to fail.
In other words, whatever we learn from the Ain about peasants remains a view from the top. Fortunately, however, the account of the Ain can be supplemented by descriptions contained in sources emanating from regions away from the Mughal capital. These include detailed revenue records from Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Further, the extensive records of the East India Company provide us with useful descriptions of agrarian relations in eastern India. All these sources record instances of conflicts between peasants, zamindars and the state. In the process they give us an insight into peasants’ perception of and their expectations of fairness from the state. (Source NCERT: class XII themes in Indian histor- II)