Disputed transactions: documents, language and authority in Eighteenth-century Marwar

Abstract

Even though all state documents in Marwar in the second half of the eighteenth century were issued in Rajasthani, Persian-language documents continued to have an active legal life and were debated, discussed and judged through Rajasthani-language petitions and orders. A close reading of one such dispute highlights tensions over the authority of community versus documents, how new forms of state record-keeping affected the legal use of documents, and how the Rajput king’s practice of customary law led to both the interpolation of shariʿa principles into that law when applied to Muslims and to the restriction of the qazi’s jurisdiction.