Order and Disorder in Colonial South India

Modern Asian Studies

Volumn 23, Issue 3, 1989, Pages 459-492

  Irschick, Eugene F ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84929064392     PISSN: 0026749X     EISSN: 14698099     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X00009513     Document Type: Article

References (71)

1. D. A. Washbrook, ‘Law, State and Society in Colonial India,’ Modern Asian Studies 15:3 (July 1981), pp. 678–9.
2. Edward Said, in his Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), p. 86, says, among other things, that this ‘discovery’ involved a decision ‘to restore a region from its present barbarism to its former classical greatness;. to feel oneself as a European in command, almost at will, of Oriental history, time and geography;. to transmute living reality into the stuff of texts, to possess (or think one possesses) actuality mainly because nothing in the Orient seems to resist one’s powers.’
3. M. M. Bakhtin, Rabelais in his world (Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press, 1965), trans. by Helene Iswolski. In speaking about the language of the marketplace he says, ‘The words are actually a cry, that is, a loud interjection in the midst of a crowd, coming out of the crowd and addressed to it. The man who is speaking is one with the crowd; he does not present himself as its opponent, nor does he teach, accuse, or intimidate it. He laughs with it’ p. 167. There are many other points where the question about the authorship of culture is placed in this interactive mode.
4. M. M. Bakhtin, The term ‘dialogic’ is from another work by Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, trans. by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, and ed. by Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981).
5. Lionel Place, Report on thejagir, 1799, para. 164.
6. Board of Revenue (BOR), Misc., v. 45, Tamil Nad State Archives (TNSA). Hereafter this document will be referred to as Place 1799 Report.
7. Jagir ‘British Acquisitions in the Presidency of Fort St. George Madras Journal of Literature and Science, 1879, p. 121.
8. C. S. Crole, The Chingleput, late Madras District (Madras: Lawrence Asylum Press, 1879), P-3.
9. Ellis’s and others’ work on these oral histories concerning the Kurumbar was reflected in the definitions provided to H. H. Wilson when he was compiling his A Glossary of Judicial and Revenue Terms and of Useful Words Occurring in Official Documents etc. (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1968, published originally in 1855). Under the entry ‘Tondaimandalam’ there is the comment: ‘Mr. Ellis supposes it to have derived its appellation from Tondaiman, a prince so named, who conquered the country probably before the era of Christianity, and granted peculiar privileges to the first settlers.’ p. 524.
10. F. W. Ellis, 1816, Board of Revenue (Misc), v. 233, TXSA. This document will be referred to as Ellis Appendix. The discussion which follows is based on it. Ellis came out to India as a writer in 1796. He knew how to read Tamil, Telugu, Sanskrit, and probably Persian.
11. Wilson, A Glossary of judicial and Revenue Terms, pp. 401 and 531.
12. BOR minute, 25 January 1796, v. 149, Board of Revenue Proceedings (hereafter BORP), TNSA.
13. D. H. A. Kolff, ‘Sannyasi Trader-Soldiers’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 8:2 (June 1971), pp. 211–18.
14. C. A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 142–3.
15. Ganga Ram in The Maharashta Purana: An Eighteenth-Century Bengali Historical Text, translated and edited by Edward Dimock and P. C. Gupta (Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1965), pp. 26–8.
16. W. W. Hunter, The Annals of Rural Bengal (Calcutta: Indian Studies, 1965), p. 25.
17. David Ludden in his unpublished paper ‘Agricultural Expansion, Diversification, and Commodity Production in Peninsular India, c. ‘1550–1800’, presented at the Association of Asian Studies meeting, San Francisco, March 25, 1988.
18. Brian Murton, ‘Key People in the Countryside: Decisionmakers in Interior Tamilnadu in the Late Eighteenth Century’, Indian Economic and Social History Review X:2 (June 1973), p. 177.
19. Pres, and Council to Committee of Assigned Revenue, 26 July 1783, Abstract of the Jaghire Revenues by. time of Nabob Sadootoolala Cawn, Jaghire Records, v.2.
20. Chingleput Collectorate Records, v. 440, 1784–1786.
21. Andre Wink, Land and Sovreignty in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 354–5.
22. Eugene F. Irschick, ‘Peasant Survival Strategies and Rehearsals for Rebellion in Eighteenth Century South India, Peasant Studies 19, 4 (Summer 1982), pp. 226–7.
23. Place to Governor, 11 June 1799, Bds Collections (BC) 2111. IOL.
24. BOR Minute 5 June 1800, BC 2112, IOL.
25. Greenway to BOR, 20 May 1801, BC 2113, IOL.
26. W. F. Wilson, History of the Madras Army (Madras: E. Keys at the Government Press, 1882), 2: 101.
27. Alexander Read to Board of Revenue, 31 March 1793, v. 9, BORP, TNSA.
28. Board of Revenue to Govt, of Madras 13 April 1793, v. 70, BORP, TNSA.
29. Minute of C. N. White, 21 October 1793, v.81, BORP, TNSA.
30. G. R. Gleig, The Life of Major General Sir Thomas Munro, Bart (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bendy: 1831), 1:61–62;.
31. Paul Benfield, 3 March 1795, Private Letter-books v.41, TNSA.
32. H. D. Love, Vestiges of Old Madras (London, 1913), III:142.
33. BOR Misc., Minute of the Board of Revenue, 5 Jan. 1818, p. 24, v. 257A, TNSA.
34. Irschick, ‘Peasant Survival Strategies,’ pp. 215–41.
35. Minute of the Board of Revenue, 5 Jan. 1818, V.257A, BOR Misc., TNSA.
36. An ulikarru is the ‘destructive wind that prevails at the end of the world.’ Tamil Lexicon, 1:502.
37. A. L. Basham, The Wonder that was India (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1954), pp. 320–1.I would like to express my thanks to George Hart for useful discussions on this matter.
38. Bundla Ramaswami Naidoo, Memoir of the Internal Revenue System of the Madras Presidency, Selections from the Records of the South Arcot District, no. 11 (Madras: Superintendent, Government press, 1908), p. 5. The Preface is dated January 1, 1820. The document is filled with many such observations.
39. Minute of C. N. White, 28 March 1793, BORP, v. 27, TNSA.
40. Minute of C. N. White, 15 March 1793, BORP, v. 27, TNSA.
41. Minute of C. N. White, 23 December 1793, BORP, v. 88, TNSA.
42. he British ‘brattis’ (Tamil: virattikal)—dried cakes of cow dunj used for fuel—is on p. 66. C. S. Crole, The Chingleput, late Madras, District (Madras Lawrence Asylum Press, 1879).
43. G. R. Gleig, Life of Warren Hast ings, 1:401.
44. Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford: Clarendoi Press, 1959), p. 3.
45. Peter Marshall, The British Discovery of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century (Cam bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 42.
46. George M. Foster, ‘Colonial Administration in Northern Rhodesia in 1962,’ Human Organization 46:4 (Winter 1987), p. 367. The emphasis is in the original. I am very grateful to Elizabeth Colson for bringing this article to my attention.
47. Mattison Mines, The Merchant-Warriors: Textiles, Trade and Territory in South India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 70.
48. Eugene Irschick, ‘Peasant Survival Strategies,’ pp. 218–19. There are many other instances in the 1780s.
49. ‘had been defrauded by their masters of the hire which was due to them, while working on the tank; and from the injustice thus done to them many had deserted and others could not be prevailed upon to engage with them, on an adjustment of the previous year’s produce, every species of peculation also appeared to have been committed.’ Place to BOR 28 June 1796, BC, v. 36, IOL.
50. Minute of the Board of Revenue, 5 Jan. 1818, v. 257A, BOR Misc., TNSA.
51. Place 1799 Report, quoted in the Fifth Report 11:43.
52. Place to BOR, 26 November 1795, BORP v. 140, TNSA.
53. Place’s 1799 Report that the Fifth Report quotes on pp. 298–317.
54. F. W. Ellis, ‘Appendix [to the] replies to the questions respecting meerasi right,’ BOR, Misc. v. 233, TNSA.
55. Minute of the Board of Revenue, 5 Jan. 1818, v. 257A, BOR Misc., TNSA.
56. W. H. Bayiey, Memorandum on Mirasi Right (London, 1856), p. 12.
57. Bayiey, Memorandum, p. 13.
58. Venkatachalla Naicker, The Poy Kharis versus Meerasidars or the Revenue System of Madras (Madras, 1870).
59. Memorandum of the Board of Revenue, 1 April 1874, in Board’s Proceedings 25 May 1875, no. 1415.
60. quoted in Revenue, 30 Sept. 1892, nos. 1010 and 1010A, TNSA.
61. Revenue_ G. O. 6297 21 Oct_ 1887 minted in ibid
62. Revenue, G. O. 260, 26 Feb. 1884, quoted in ibid.
63. Ellis, in 1816, had witten that the Paraiyar sometimes ‘claim miras or hereditary private property’ and that ‘it is generally allowed to them and their descendents on proving their former residence in the village, however long they may have been absent.’ Quoted in the Minute of the Board of Revenue, 5 Jan. 1818, vol. 257A, BOR Misc. TNSA.
64. Gyan Prakash, ‘Empowered resistance and contested power of South Asia,’ pp. 8–9, paper delivered at the American Historical Association, Washington, D.C., December 1987.
65. F. W. Ellis, ‘Appendix [to the] replies to the questions respecting meerasi right,’ BOR Misc., v.233, TNSA.
66. ‘doomed to the meanest offices, [and] can acquire no property in land.’ Place 1799 Report, para. 69, quoted in the Fifth Report, p. 298.
67. Eugene F. Irschick, Politics and Social Conflict in South India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), p. 281.
68. Eugene F. Irschick, Tamil Revivalism in the igjos (Madras; Cre-A, 1986), p. 42.
69. Fox, Lions, p. 205.
70. Maraimalaiyadikal, Tamilar matam [Religion of the Tamils] (Madras: Tirunelvelit tenintia caivacitanta nulpatippuk kalakam, 1958), pp. 124–5. This work was originally published in 1941.
71. John Clammer, ‘Colonialism and the perception of tradition in Fiji,’ p. 199. In Talal Asad (ed.), Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (New York: Humanities Press, 1973). I would like to thank Ms. Molly Lee who brought this article to my attention.