Chapter 5 - The Disjointed Spaces of Precolonial Territorial Divisions

Summary

Territorial relationships between different polities possessed the characteristic forms of the property system, but on the largest possible scales. Thus, at their edges territorial jurisdictions began to intermingle, while the revenues of some reign - sometimes of whole polities - might well be shared, both parties more than likely organizing their own administrations in the regions concerned. This closely mirrored the tendency of military leaders in the Deccan to hold properties under the jurisdictions of more than one power, and of each holder of fiscal rights in a particular locus to have his own collectorate, a plurality of such collectors descending on the countryside at harvest time.

—Frank Perlin

The boundaries of this state [of Jhansi, in North India] which consist of so many parts cannot be described in aggregation.

—Capt. J. Franklin

There is a very extraordinary variety between Pergannahs and even Talooks on every point on which comparison can be made, and the circumstances combined with the undoubted habit of the royts to migrate from place to place renders it indispensable that every statistical enquiry to be correct should be recent in date and narrowed in locality.{…]