User:Fowler&fowler/Mysore, 1513–1947 CE

Sources and historiography
There is very little contemporaneous documentation of the pre-1760 period of Mysore's history, especially the last century of that period. According to, the 18th-century Wodeyar rulers of Mysore&mdash;in contrast to their contemporaries in Rajputana, Central India, Maratha Deccan, and Tanjavur&mdash;left little or no record of their administrations.

A Wodeyar dynasty genealogy, the Maisüru Mahardjara Vamsävali of Tirumalarya, was composed in Kannada during the period 1710–1715, and was claimed to be based on all the then-extant inscriptions in the region. Another genealogy, Kalale Doregala Vamgdvati, of the Delvoys, the near-hereditary chief ministers of Mysore, was composed around the turn of the 19th century. However, neither manuscript provides information about administration, economy or military capability. The ruling dynasty's origins, especially as expounded in later palace genealogies, are also of doubtful accuracy; this is, in part, because the Wodeyars, who were reinstated by the British on the Mysore gaddi in 1799, to preside over a fragile sovereignty, "obsessively" attempted to demonstrate their "unbroken" royal lineage, to bolster their then uncertain status.

The earliest manuscript offering clues to governance and military conflict in the pre-1760 Mysore, seems to be, an annual letter written in Portuguese by a Mysore-based Jesuit missionary, Joachim Dias, and addressed to his Provincial superior. After East India Company's final 1799 victory over Tipu, official Company records began to be published as well; these include, a collection of Anglo-Mysore Wars-related correspondence between the Company's officials in India and Court of Directors in London, and , the first report on the new Princely State of Mysore by its first British resident, Mark Wilks. Around this time, French accounts of the Anglo-Mysore wars appeared as well, and included, a history of the wars by Joseph-François Michaud, another Jesuit priest. The first attempt at including a comprehensive history of Mysore in an English language work is, an account of a survey of South India conducted at Lord Richard Wellesley's request, by Francis Buchanan, a Scottish physician and geographer.

The first explicit History of Mysore in English is, written by Mark Wilks, the British resident mentioned above. Wilks claimed to have based his history on various Kannada documents, not only the ones mentioned above, but also many that have not survived. According to, all subsequent classic histories of Mysore have borrowed heavily from Wilks's book for their pre-1760 content. These include,, Lewis Rice's well-known Gazetteer and , C. Hayavadana Rao's major revision of the Gazetteer half a century later, and many spin-offs of these two works. By the end of the period of British Commissionership of Mysore (1831–1881), many English language works had begun to appear on a variety of Mysore-related subjects. These included, a book of English translations of Kannada language inscriptions, and , William Digby's two volume critique of British famine policy during the Great Famine of 1876–78, which devastated Mysore for years to come; the latter work, even referred to Mysore as a "province."

Autonomy: advances and setbacks
Although legends date the Wodeyar (also "Odeyar," "Wodiyar," or "Wadiar," literally "chief") dynasty's origins to 1399, they in fact go back no earlier than the early sixteenth century, and in the estimation of some historians, even the late sixteenth or early seventeenthy centuries. These chieftains are first mentioned in a Kannada literary work in the early 16th century. A petty chieftain,  Chamaraja, with dominion over a few villages on the banks of the river Kaveri, is said to have constructed a small fort and named it, Mahisura-nagara,  from which Mysore gets its name. The Wodeyar clan themselves issued their first inscription in 1551 during the chieftaincy of Timmaraja Wodeyar. Two decades later, they are recorded to have owned 33 villages and fielded an army of 300 men. During this time, the Wodeyar chieftains, like other Nayaks in the region, were vassals of the Vijayanagara Empire.

Contemporary sources




Classic sources