Description
Book SynopsisThe Thar Desert, which is today divided by an international boundary, has historically been a frontier region connecting Punjab, Multan, Sindh, Gujarat and Rajasthan. This book looks at the Desert as an historical region shaped through the mobility of its inhabitants - warriors, pastoralists, traders, ascetics and bards, often in overlapping capacities. It challenges the frames of Mughal-Rajput relationships generally employed to explore the histories of the Thar, arguing that Rajputana remains an inadequate category to explore polities located in this frontier region, where along with Rajputs, a range of groups, such as Charans, Bhils, Meenas, Soomras and Pathans controlled circulation, and with whom the Rajput states had to constantly negotiate. Sifting through a wide range of Rajasthani written and oral narratives, travelogues of British administrators, and vernacular as well as English records, the book explores long-term relationships between mobility, martiality, memory and identity in the desert expanses of the Thar.
Table of ContentsList of tables; List of abbreviations; Preface; Acknowledgements; Glossary; Note on transliteration, translation and dates; Contemporary place names and their nineteenth-century spellings; Introduction; 1. Geographical imagination and narratives of a region; 2. Mobility, polity, territory; 3. Itinerants of the Thar: mobility and circulation; 4. Expanding state contracting space: the Thar in the nineteenth century; 5. Narratives of mobility and mobility of narratives; Conclusions: nomadic narratives in the frontiers; Bibliography; Appendix 1. Jodhpur King list; Appendix 2. Bikaner King list; Appendix 3. Jaisalmer King list; Index.
