Abstract
Histories of the Mysore (Maisūru) kingdom, one of the most influential regional states in early modern South India, began to be written in plain Kannada prose no later than the first half of the eighteenth century. The kingdom survived India’s colonization and became one of the largest princely states under British hegemony. The kingdom’s histories were successively compiled or written in plain Kannada prose under the rule of the princely state of Mysore. This paper takes up two histories of the kingdom, namely “Details of the Past Development of the Mysore Kings (Maisūru Doregaḷa Pūrvābhyudaya Vivara)” and “Genealogy of the Mysore Royal Family (Maisūru Doregaḷa Vaṃśāvaḷi),” which were completed at the earliest stage of the kingdom’s historiography in the early eighteenth century. Though the two histories were written in close temporal proximity, their contents show many discrepancies. Regarding composition, the kaifiyat–like “Details of the Past Development of the Mysore Kings” comprises documents of various provenances and formats, whereas the “Genealogy of the Mysore Royal Family” records events chronologically. These content and format differences suggest that the kingdom’s early histories were written or compiled individually, without one influencing the other and independent of royal intervention. On the other hand, despite the differences between the two histories, their authors or compilers shared a common framework for understanding the kingdom’s historical development and gave much importance to detailing the territory’s expansion through military conquest. Given that other historical texts from early modern South India are more concerned with delineating the rulers’ authority and statuses in relation to other political and religious subjects above and below them, focusing on the kingship’s territorial dimension is rather unique and can be said to be a feature of the Mysore kingdom’s historiography.
