James Tod's Rajasthan

by Tillotson, Giles

• ISBN13: 9788185026800
• ISBN10: 8185026807
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-01-13
• Publisher: Marg Pubns

Summary

An important study of James Tod's collection of Mewar painting, equestrian portraits and coins in the Royal Asiatic Society and his role in and importance to the historiography of Rajasthan. James Tod served with the East India Company in central and western India from 1799 to 1822, and most notably from 1818 as the Company's "Resident" or political representative at the Rajput courts. He took the opportunity to make a detailed study of the region's history with its dominant Rajput clans and their mythic origins up to his own time. Tod amassed a vast collection of religious and historical manuscripts, ancient coins, old and new miniature paintings, and commissioned drawings of the many sites he visited. He used all this material for his major work, entitled Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, which is still widely regarded as the fullest and most significant history of the region ever published. The coin collection in the Royal Asiatic Society is explored here along with the relation of the methods and language of the Annals to both Western and contemporary Rajasthani intellectual trends as well as Tod's view of the Rajputs and the legacy of his interpretation. The book carries an account of Tod's use of a crucial Rajasthani text, the Prithviraj Raso.