The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom

by Nicholas B. Dirks

• ISBN13: 9780521053723
• ISBN10: 0521053722
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-12-03
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

A pioneering piece of ethnohistory, The Hollow Crown uses a variety of interdisciplinary means to reconstruct the sociocultural history of a warrior polity in south India between the fourteenth and the twentieth centuries. Central to the book is the belief that comparative sociology has systematically denied the importance of the Indian state and obscured the political basis of Indian society by representing caste as fundamentally a religious system. In reconstructing the history of the polity that eventually became the colonial princely state of Pudukkottai, Dr Dirks therefore raises a whole series of issues concerning the methodologies of history and anthropology, the character of Tamil kingship and social organization, the relationship between politics and ritual, the impact of colonialism and 'modernization', and the dynamics of the whole last millennium of south Indian history.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations

List of maps

List of tables

Preface

Glossary of terms

Map of the Madras Presidency, 1900

Map of Pudukkottai State

The Tondaiman line of Pudukkottai

Introduction

The study of state and society in India

History and Ethnohistory

The historical context of the old regime

The discourse of kingship: representations of authority in the old regime

A Little Kingdom in the Old Regime

Pudukkottai and the old regime: gift, order, and authority in a south Indian little kingdom

The early history of the Pudukkottai region

Tondaiman Raj: 1686-1801

Social Relations of a Little Kingdom

Royal Kallars

Political hegemony and social relations: caste in Pudukkottai

Temples and society

Colonial Mediations: Contradictions Under the Raj

Agrarian rebellion? Last gasp of the old regime

The colonization of the political order: land settlements, political intervention and structural change

Temples and conflict: the changing context of worship

The theatre state: princely politics in colonial south India

Conclusion

Ethnohistory and the Indian state

Appendix: land and privilege: inams in Pudukkottai

References

List of records and abbreviations

List of archives and record offices

Index

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