James Tod’s Rajasthan
edited by Giles Tillotson
Marg Books, Rs 2,500

The fate of most historians is to have their works consigned to dusty shelves, from where the occasional student picks them up and reads. It is the good fortune of a few historians, such as Gibbon or Thucydides, to transcend their time and to be familiar even to those who have not read a word they have written. Then, there is the rarest of the rare, a historian, both read and honoured, with a town being named after him — James Tod, the historian of the Rajputs, memorialised in Todgarh in Rajasthan.

Tod’s Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, published almost two centuries ago, is the defining book of the land. It is, therefore, surprising that till now, there has been only one full-length study, and that too only in Hindi. The situation has now been rectified to some extent by this beautifully illustrated book, in which the focus is both on the treasures that Tod left behind, and his legacy as a historian.

The Mirzapur-born Tod rose fast in the service of Company Bahadur, ultimately becoming the first British political agent in the western Rajput states, before an early return to England, probably a result of what was perceived as his being too sympathetic to Rajput interests. He became a founder-member of the Royal Asiatic Society and its first librarian. The book begins with the Society, with the collection of Rajasthani paintings and manuscripts that Tod left there, and which have been largely ignored. Giles Tillotson and Francis D’Souza note that Tod’s appreciation of Rajput architecture led to Annals being enhanced with drawings of landscapes and buildings, something new in British writings on India. Rima Hooja links the manuscript collection to the Annals.

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