The Marathi Kaulnama: Property, sovereignty and documentation in a persianate form

Abstract

Kaulnamas were ubiquitous in early modern Marathi bureaucratic documentation. They were issued as deeds of assurance offering protection and confirming various rights, especially during warfare or invasion. Such documents were issued at different levels of the administrative hierarchy in the Adilshahi and Maratha administrations to prevent flight from troubled areas, extend cultivation, and encourage commerce. They also recorded grants of waste land to cultivators on graduated rates of taxation, or to merchants for developing market towns. This paper historicizes the kaulnama form from the seventeenth through the early nineteenth centuries, exploring the kinds of transactions of power, sovereignty and property it was part of. Through this focus on the trajectory of particular documentary forms, it reflects on the nature of the Persianate within Marathi bureaucratic practices, and the history of the Marathi language more broadly.