Rajputana
Rājputāna (Hindi: राजपूताना, Urdu: راجپوتانا) meaning “Land of the Rajputs”[1] was a historical region that included the present-day Indian state of Rajasthan and parts of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat[1] and Pakistan.[2] The name was later adopted by British government as Rajputana Agency for its dependencies in the region of present-day Indian state of Rājasthān.[3] Rajputana agency included 18 princely states, two chiefships and the British district of Ajmer-Merwara. This British official term remained till its replacement by "Rajasthan" in the constitution of 1949.[3] Rajputana was the subject of the 2009 movie Gulaal.
Name
George Thomas (Military Memories) was the first in 1800 A.D., to term this region as Rajputana Agency.[4] The historian John Keay in his book, India: A History, stated that the Rajputana name was coined by the British, but that the word even achieved a retrospective authenticity: in an 1829 translation of Ferishta's history of early Islamic India, John Briggs discarded the phrase Indian princes, as rendered in Dow's earlier version, and substituted Rajpoot princes.
The region was previously long known as Gurjaratra (an early form of "Gujarat"), before it came to be called Rajputana during the medieval period.[5] [6]
Geography
The area of Rajputana is estimated to be 343,328 square km (132,559 square miles) and breaks down into two geographic divisions:
- An area northwest of the Arāvalli Range including part of the Great Indian (Thar) Desert, with characteristics of being sandy and unproductive.
- A higher area southeast of the range, which is fertile by comparison.
The whole area forms the hill and plateau country between the north Indian plains and the main plateau of peninsular India.[citation needed]
See also
Notes
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References
- Low, Sir Francis (ed.) The Indian Year Book & Who’s Who 1945-46, The Times of India Press, Bombay.
- Sharma, Nidhi Transition from Feudalism to Democracy, Aalekh Publishers, Jaipur, 2000 ISBN 81-87359-06-4.
- Webb, William Wilfrid The Currencies of the Hindu States of Rajputana, Archibald Constable & Co., Westminster, 1893.
- Rajputana, Encyclopædia Britannica.
- Rajputanas.com.
External links
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