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Notes on the Sources for Local History in North India
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
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Most research into modern Indian economic and social history has so far been carried out in such large and well organized research centers as the National Archives in Delhi, the National Library in Calcutta, and the India Office Library in London. These institutions are justly renowned for their vast collections of manuscripts and books on all aspects of Indian history. So extensive in fact are their holdings that one could easily spend an entire lifetime working happily in any one of them. And their attractiveness is no doubt further enhanced by the convenient location of all these institutions in large metropolitan centers, where students and teachers alike congregate in large numbers.
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- Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1967
References
1 For an account of an occasion when the reports of the district magistrates proved more reliable in pointing to the true state of affairs in the area under their charge than those of the officials above or beneath them, see Frykenberg, R. E., Guntur District 1788–1848 (Oxford, 1965)Google Scholar.
2 The district officers were also required to submit regular reports to the Board of Revenue on a wide range of subjects relating to the revenue administration of the districts. These reports, which were simply received and filed in the Board's proceedings, contain a great deal of useful data, much of it statistical in nature.
3 These records, organized in subject-wise bastas by district, are at the State Archives, Allahabad, and provide unquestionably the best single source for the study of late nineteenth century rural and local history of Oudh.
4 It should be noted however that the India Office Library has duplicate copies of many of these volumes of proceedings, and that the material relating to revenue matters is largely duplicated in the very full proceedings of the Board of Revenue, preserved in the Allahabad Archives.
5 For a detailed description of the older district records see Dewar, Douglas, A Hand-Book to the English Pre-Mutiny Records in the Government Record Rooms of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, (Allahabad, n.d. [ca. 1920])Google Scholar. Many more records have since come to light, particularly for the post-Mutiny period not treated by Dewar. Those which are included in the Allahabad Archives will be listed in Joshi's, V. C.Guide to Sources of Modern Indian History, currently in preparation at the Indian Institute of Public Administration, New DelhiGoogle Scholar.
6 Because of their physical proximity to the Archives, the records of the Commissioner of the Allahabad Division have been left in the Commissioner's Record Room.
7 Detailed accounts of the character and preparation of village records can be found in Moreland, W. H., The Revenue Administration of the United Provinces (Allahabad, 1911), chs. xiii–xxiiGoogle Scholar; and in Lewis, Oscar, Village Life in Northern India (Vintage reprint, New York, 1965)Google Scholar, Appendix: “Analysis of Patvari Records,” pp. 329–47.
8 The usual practice is for changes of occupancy or title occurring during the course of a settlement to be registered with the tahsildar, and recorded in red ink in the register; the whole book is then rewritten at settlement to incorporate the changes.
9 This statement is based on a random examination of village records in three collectorates (Pratapgarh, Faizabad, and Gonda), discussions with district officials, and two days in the field with a district officer engaged in the examination and revision of patwari records. I did not have occasion to visit any tahsil offices, so cannot state precisely which records are preserved there.
10 This information was related to me by the present manager of the Balrampur estate, Syed Ali Jaffery. The Maharaja's personal library, which was not completely dispersed at that time, and which contains many rare books, is now in the possession of the M.L.K. Degree College, Balrampur.
11 Indicative of the difficulties involved in using such family records is the fact that this archive contains documents written in three different languages—English, Hindi, and Urdu; and the valuable Urdu correspondence is written in the cursive Shikasta script. This use of short hand, or even of distinctive scripts such as Kayathi and Mahajuni was common practice among Indian families, many of whom, especially among the mercantile community, wished in this way to preserve their records from the prying eyes of uninitiated outsiders.
12 See Goswamy, B. N., “The Records Kept by the Priests at Centres of Pilgrimage as a Source of Social and Economic History,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. III, No. 2 (June 1966), 174–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Reeves, P. D., The Landlords' Response to Political Change in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, 1921–37. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (Canberra, Australia, 1963)Google Scholar.
14 Hauser, Walter, “The Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha, 1929–42; a Study of an Indian Peasant Movement.” Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (Chicago, 1961)Google Scholar.
15 See Vansina, Jan, Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology (London, 1965)Google Scholar.