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An Enduring Prestige: Land Grants in a Princely State Census.

Authors :
Cannon, Brian T.
Source :
Journal of the Economic & Social History of the Orient. 2023, Vol. 66 Issue 3/4, p422-461. 40p.
Publication Year :
2023

Abstract

This essay employs the land register of a late nineteenth-century Hindi census conducted in the princely state of Marwar (Rajasthan) to examine the durability of the tax-free (sasan) land grant regime over the course of three centuries. It evaluates the privilege sasan grants inured on their holders until the mid-twentieth century, when a series of a structural land reforms all but overnight changed the ways in which grant holders and their kin interacted with land and state authorities. The essay reads processes of land grant donation and maintenance across a wide social, economic, and ecological spectrum. In so doing, it challenges historiographical assumptions of religion as a fundamental grant donation motive in the region, as well as the idea that land relations were primarily defined by revenue extraction in early modern and colonial north India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
00224995
Volume :
66
Issue :
3/4
Database :
Academic Search Index
Journal :
Journal of the Economic & Social History of the Orient
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
163282192
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1163/15685209-12341599