Indian Historical Review

The evolution of territorial self-consciousness was among the most significant and historically far-reaching developments of the later half of the first millennium CE in the Indian subcontinent. However, discussions concerning this complex process have not had the benefit of systematic exploration. Although a handful of perspectives exist, they have been presented impressionistically in the context of debates on feudalism and state formation. In this article, this question is examined in relation to the rise of territoriality in the eastern Indian region of Kaliṅga. On the basis of the evidence occurring in inscriptions from the region, it is argued that large-scale expansion of agriculture and the spread of landed property, the prospects thus generated by the political control that could be exercised over its resources and the consolidation of such prospects at different local, supralocal and regional levels were the causes that resulted in the rise of Kaliṅga as a geopolitically self-conscious territory.

The celebration of Nauroz, being one of the most well-defined events of the Mughal Court, finds ample space in their records. Yet, its story was not just about grandeur and magnificence, but touches several aspects of what made and sustained the empire. Building on the multiple identities of the festival, which emerges from a brief overview of its antecedents, this article examines the ways in which the sources have presented each of the emperors to have negotiated with it. However, it is on stringing them together and noting the changing nature of references that the layers begin to reveal themselves, discerning not only what the sources voiced but also may have attempted to suppress, in our endeavour to understand the cultural functioning and articulation of power in the Mughal Empire.

The study of coinage and economy of any area has its own appeal. As they are not much affected by outline influence, so they often proceed along their own lines and thus can have significance for people trying to determine the general patterns of development. In precolonial phase of Indian history, the Ahom kingdom situated in the North-Eastern part demands special attention as it had its own glorious series of coinage. As a royal issue, the coins of Ahom kingdom were the emblems of royalty and symbolic majesty of the Ahom kings. The metals, the motifs as well as other accompanying details on the coins depict the details of faiths and customs adopted by the Ahom kingdom. In this write up, we will discuss the origin, growth, importance in contemporary economy and many other aspects of the Ahom coinage in a comprehensive manner.

Flood management and embankment maintenance were responsibilities of the state and the social institutions for many centuries. But as the colonial state was based on an epistemic foundation different from the previous regimes, the period witnessed the creation of a new institutional order which resulted in close collaboration between the institution of surveys and the administration of inland water management. As a result, the colonial intervention was characterised by deployment of a corps of engineers who used the knowledge gathered from surveys for managing the water channels and their banks. The process witnessed the establishment of a branch of the military devoted to engineering work in the colonies where supervision and intervention by European experts became an essential feature.

The early colonial rule in itself was in a process of transformation: from a commercial/mercantile entity to a fiscal-military state. It was also a state which was establishing a routinised bureaucracy. How both these developments were reflected on the institutions of water management is a central concern of this study. The subordination of the traditional agency in these developments is an important question.

The historiography of Malaya that deals with Indian diaspora rarely differentiates Indians on the basis of their ethnic³ origins and their relationships during the British era. The ethnic Indian populations during the British era comprised the majority Tamils, and the other groups such as the Telugus, Malayalees, Gujeratis, Chettiars, Sikhs and Indian Muslims. The ethnic groupings among those of Indian origin could be divided into three main economic classes: labour, business and civil service. This article focuses on the Chettiars as the group that comprised the business class and looks at their interactions with the other ethnic groups of Indian origin belonging to the labour class and civil service. This article demonstrates that although the Chettiar provided credit to other Indian ethnic groups, the moneylending system was one-sided, favouring only the Chettiar, who did not play a positive role in ensuring the overall socio-economic interests and welfare of working class Indians.

Institutional interpretation on Hindu womanhood is one of the vague areas of historical research in modern India. The rise and growth of ‘new’ Indian womanhood in late nineteenth century put forward a number of unresolved issues like domesticity, conjugality, sexuality public service, motherhood, companionate marriages and others into the nationalist arena and a few pamphlets were published in twentieth century to redress these issues from an ultra-gendered platform. One such interpretation came from the Bharat Sevashram Sangha which not only challenged the notions of ‘neo’ womanhood of nineteenth century, but also provided one sanctified ideal of Hindu womanhood based on the alternative mode of Hindutva, if not Hindu nationalism. Swami Vedananda’s Hindu Narir Adorsho O Sadhona (The Ideals and Vows of the Hindu Women) could be cited as an excellent example of how obscure references from classical Hinduism were used to ‘legitimise’ and ‘revive’ the past for the reconstruction of Hindu womanhood at a time when a hegemonic middle-class culture had already been consolidated on the language of nationalist modernity. Bharat Sevashram Sangha and, for example, Swami Vedananda completely rejected modernity as an offshoot of colonialism; a paradox which defined woman both as self-conscious subject and as passive recipients of reform. The present article seeks to analyse the text of Swami Vedananda as a counter narrative of colonial/nationalist modernity on Hindu womanhood and traces the reasons why the Sangh failed to resolve the question of ‘female masculinity’ it had once proposed to work on.

This report focuses on the recently discovered foundations of an early Gupta temple constructed from brick and stone and situated near the small village of Khanderia in the Bundi district of Rajasthan. A Śiva ekamukhaliṅga of exceptional beauty and sophistication lies within a sizeable sanctum, leading us to believe that this may once have been a monument of some importance. This report explores the temple ruins, the recent history of the site and the surrounding landscape. It is hoped that this article will add to scholarship on the Gupta presence in the Western Mālwa region.