As I've said many times already, of all the regions of the British Raj, Gujarat was by far the worst. The border-gore was horrible, the states were practically fractal and the sources wildly inconsistent. Across multiple sources, the British authorities were apparently never able to compile a complete list of states, as without fail either one or two petty states slipped through the cracks and were missed or a handful of state-like entities were listed when they shouldn't've been. I have so far tried my hardest to compile my own, as-complete-as-possible list of Princely States, comparing and contrasting multiple often-contradictory sources and making educated guesses in cases where said sources are too sparse or contradictory.
However, even I have a limit to how far I can go, and that limit was apparently the Palanpur Agency.
But before I delve into that utter hell, I first need to walk you through my decisions behind the fiendish but at least somewhat surmountable
Mahi Kantha Agency. In 1914, this Agency occupied the north-eastern chunk of OTL Gujarat, on the border with Rajputana. There were three major states, Idar, Danta and Pol (
that would change its name to Vijaynagar in 1934), plus a tonne of smaller but still notable states that mostly nevertheless check out across all sources that I've seen. One final such source I need to raise in regards to this area is another Volume of the
Bombay Gazetteer;
Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. V, Cutch, Palanpur and Mahi Kantha (1880). This covers a few areas of northern Gujarat, and alas the versions I've found online digitised aren't of the best quality (the one I've linked to is the least crap one). It does however provide a list of states, one which tallies pretty closely with other sources, at least regarding the jurisdictional and semi-jurisdictional states.
Before I dive into the nitty-gritty of accounting for the Thana states, there is one notable discrepancy to raise, concerning a "state" listed by some sources that I think was created by mis-readings of the 1909
Gazetteer. Right at the end of the table
provided here is an entry for what appears to be a state called Sadra Bazaar. I'm pretty certain that this wasn't a state, as I have not been able to find references to a state called either Sadra or Sadra Bazaar in any period sources and lists. What I think happened is that the
Gazetteer listed a notable town, Sadra, headquarters of the Mahi Kantha Agency, distinctly due to its administrative importance without clarifying that it was not a full state. This wouldn't be an isolated incident either, as other tables in the
Gazetteer also list civil stations and small British exclaves in the same tables as full states. This is because the tables in question are listing statistics for entities under the Agency in question, and while that mostly means Princely States, there were a few cases of British exclaves or British-administered land falling under the administrative aegis of an Agency too. Other researchers looking at the
Gazetteer tables apparently didn't realise this fact, mis-interpreting Sadra-Bazaar as a full state. While worldstatesman avoids the trap,
the old hisatlas map has apparently fallen for the misconception, showing an uncertain state of Sadra Bazaar on the territory of the small state of Vasna.
I'm pretty sure this map on Wikipedia for example inherited the mistake, as it and associated maps are basically svg copies of the old hisatlas map. The uncertainty around Sadra Bazaar aside, the main problems came, once again, from trying to figure out how many states there were in each Thana.
The first Thana was blessedly easy; Sabar Kantha Thana, that grouped together about a dozen small estates bordering on the semi-jurisdictional state of Ilol.
In it's list of states, the 1880
Bombay Gazetteer assigns about a dozen petty estates to Sabar Kantha Thana (
for example here, while describing Prempur), while the Thana also appears in an incomplete form
in this table in the 1909
Gazetteer. There are some discrepancies between the two sources; for example, at some point between 1880 and 1909 the two nearby semi-jurisdictional states of Rupal and Dadhalia lost their jurisdictional powers due to mismanagement and were lumped in with Sabar Kantha Thana (see a footnote in
this table from the 1909
Gazetteer). According to worldstatesman,
this Thana was abolished in the 1920's and its constituent states were elevated to being in direct relations with the British government, which would be impossible to accurately map at the scale of the R-QBAM, considering all 12 states fit into just two pixels on the map. In 1914 however it was still around, simplifying things considerably. It was a little fiddly to get the two lists to align; as mentioned the 1880
Gazetteer considers
Dadhalia and Rupal full states, while
the table in the 1909
Gazetteer isn't entirely clear, with a few states listed outside Sabar Kantha Thana but assigned to it by footnotes
here. Acconting for those discrepancies, both sources line up perfectly, both with each other, and with the states highlighted as formerly part of Sabar Kantha by worldstatesman
here.
The other easy Thana was Katosan Thana, where there was one notable discrepancy that needed looking into, though fortunately it turned out to be inconsequential. While checking list of states in Katosan Thana against the
new hisatlas map, I noticed something a little off with the small state of Ijpura; hisatlas presents two states, Ijpura-Barotna and Ijpura-Jethaji, in marked contrast with the primary literature. The 1880
Gazetteer lists just Ijpura, as does every other source I've found (e.g.,
the 1939 Memoranda,
worldsatesman, the
1909 Gazetteer,
indianroyalty ect). The most logical solution was that it was indeed just one state, but that hisatlas split it for whatever reason (as it does on occasion), however in this case, I was able to come up with an alternative hypothesis that would also fit the data. The 1880
Gazetteer notably states that Ijpura
didn't follow primogeniture, and I've found
a record from 1894 on the "
Death of Thakur Gobarsingji Becharji, of Ijpura, and the succession of his two sons Jethi Sing and Umed Sing" among the ever-useful old Indian government records. Taken together, it's possible that Ijpura was split between two sons in 1894, but every other later source missed that and instead referred back to the 1880
Gazetteer entry made while the state was whole, erroneously listing one state instead of two. However, both the
1916 Memoranda and
the 1939 Memoranda state that Ijpura taluka had multiple shareholders, providing an alternate explanation for the split inheritances. For now, I'll call it just one state, but note that there is a mild question mark attached to that conclusion. Aside from Ijpura, there were no major discrepancies regarding Katosan Thana. The 1909
Gazetteer lists three additional entities,
but in the footnotes states that these were not full states but co-shared villages. Every other source I've seen states that there were only 10 states in Katosan Thana (assuming Ijpura was whole), so I'm disregarding them.
Next up are two related cases; Vatrak Kantha Thana and Bawishi Thana. These two are notable as they land squarely in the grey area between "Thana containing multiple constituent states" and "Single state with multiple sub-estates". Both of these entities were called Thanas, but where they are mentioned at all, they are (usually) treated as if they were single states, with their constituent components elaborated on little. Unfortunately, in both cases, mentions in the primary literature are scant to non-existent, which makes figuring out their true nature incredibly problematic. What follows is my best attempt to parse how these entities were governed from the less-than-helpful literature.
I'll start with Bawishi Thana, often alternately spelled Bavishi Thana. I've not been able to find much, but here's what I have. The 1880
Gazetteer lists it as one of the territorial divisions of Mahi Kantha
and describes it as "
Bavisi including the Rajput district of Vasna and a large number of Koli villages, formerly part of the Gaikwar district of Dehgam which were handed over to the Agency on account of the unruly character of its people". "
Bavisi Thana"
is listed on the second page of the Mahi Kantha table in the 1909 Gazetteer, which lists several statistics (population, area, tribute paid and who to) for the Thana collectively. There is a further
footnote that states; "[It]
Is constituted of 24 Chief matadari villages and 72 sub-villages, including Barmuada".
That same source separately lists it as "
Bavisi Thana - Petty State in Mahi Kantha, Bombay". It is not mentioned at all by the 1916
Memoranda. Trust me, I've checked, there's nothing in the index, and I haven't been able to find anything reading through the tables and entries under the Mahi Kantha Agency. It gets a cursory mention in the 1939
Memoranda;
an entry in the final table listing Talukas by Thana, which lists it as entry no. 9; "
Bawishi Thana", saying literally nothing else. Interestingly, five states that Hisatlas shows as part of Bawishi Thana are listed under "
Vakhtapur Thana", entry no. 7 in
the aforementioned list of Thanas.
That is the sum total of information I was able to find on Bawishi Thana from perusing the primary sources, and as you can see, it isn't much to go on. There is a little more agreement from modern sources;
worldstatesman claims there were 25 states in Bawishi Thana,
which is apparently corroborated by hisatlas, that shows 25 labelled entities as part of the Thana. A figure of 25 is also remarkably close to the "
24 Chief Matadari villages"
claimed by the 1909 Gazetteer. No other source I've so far found mentions Bawisi Thana at all.
First question, what exactly was a matadari village?
The answer is provided by the Palanpur Agency Directory (more on that source below) - a matadari village was a village without a hereditary chief. Instead a leader was appointed from among the villagers, usually by the British authorities, to collect taxes and perform administrative duties, in effect functioning as an appointed-dictatorial village republic. There were a tonne of states like this in the Palanpur Agency (part of the reason that region was such an enigma), but it appears that the villages of Bawishi Thana functioned in the same way too.
But here's the key problem - how were these villages governed? Modern sources (
hisatlas,
worldstatesman), imply that it was a true Thana consisting of 25 petty states. From the scant references in the primary sources however, I'm going to go against the more modern sources and assume that Bawishi Thana functioned as a sort of loose confederation of about a hundred local village dictatorships, all under the overarching dominance of the British government. I'm making this assumption as every time Bawishi Thana is mentioned, it is as a single political unit, treated as if it were just one state.
That the 1909 Gazetteer treats it collectively as a petty state here is, I believe, pretty telling. Individual sub-states are almost never mentioned individually and appear in basically no lists of states I have found,
with the notable exception of the seven states singled out by the 1939 Memoranda as part of Vakhtapur Thana that
hisatlas still assigns to Bawishi Thana. As I've found no lists of states in the primary literature, it is plausible that five geographically distinct villages originally in Bawishi were split off to be governed separately under a new Thana at some point between 1909 and 1939, gaining the state-like recognition in the process, however this conjecture remains unproven.
While this was a difficult decision to make, I eventually decided to class Bawishi Thana as just one state-level entity rather than as a Thana of dozens of states as more modern sources imply. It is thus also provided with only one listing in my own list of Princely States, though as ever this contentious decision is marked by an asterisk.
It's a similar story for Vatrak Kantha Thana.
The 1880 Gazetteer lists it as; "
Vatrak Kantha, the Koli possessions on both sides of the Vatrak River".
The 1909 Gazetteer lists it as a Thana, and even mentions two sub-states by name (Nirmali and Jher). However it also states in a
footnote that "
Nirmali and Jher are shared by the Gaikwar and the Miyan of Mandwa, and are administered by the Political Agent, Mahi Kantha", implying some kind of co-ownership between Baroda (The Gaekwar dynasty was theruling family of Baroda, and the family name is often used as a shorthand for Baroda State in period sources) and an unknown second party (the "
Miyan of Mandwa", whoever that was). Just as with Bawishi Thana, the 1916
Memoranda also doesn't mention Vatrak Kantha Thana at all,
and it gets a similarly dismissive short entry in the 1939 Memoranda, again without any sub-states listed separately.
From these scant references, I'm going to assume that Vatrak Kantha Thana was governed similarly to Bawishi Thana - a loose collection of matadari villages and co-dominions under the separate political supervision of the local Political Agent. As such, as with Bawishi Thana, I'll be counting Vatrak Kantha as one de-facto state, even though in this case
I have at least one source that distinctly names some sub-states, however with caveats. As mentioned, both the modern sources claim a very similar number of states for both problematic Thanas, but worldstatesman doesn't provide a list, and I haven't been able to find enough primary sources listing sub-states for me to be confident in that they were governed distinctly as opposed to collectively as I suspect. It is also possible that worldstatesman is using hisatlas as a primary source, in which case it isn't two sources independently backing each other up but one source re-citing another. My decisions could change if I dig up better primary sources (or any sources really), but for now I'm going with 'collective entity called but not functioning as a Thana' for both cases.
Finally, there's Gadhwada Thana, which is, frankly, an indecipherable mess. The annoying thing is, there are just enough sources available that I figured it would be possible to piece something together, however when I looked into it those sources turned out to be too spotty and inconsistent for me to be certain on much at all. I was able to cobble together a best-guess consensus list, but there isn't much there that I'm particularly certain on. On the plus side, in contrast with Bawishi Thana and Vatrak Kantha Thana, its states were often listed distinctly as full states. That is where the good news ends however, as on the other hand most of those lists are laughably incomplete, and some wildly-divergent transliterations for local names only confuse things further.
The majority of sources list six states consistently; Hadol, Satlasna, Bhalusna, Timba, Umari and Mota Kotarna, though it should be noted that accounting for theses states in the 1880
Gazetteer is a little uncertain. Firstly, the 1880
Gazetteer uses some rather different transliterations for the names of the states that it mentions, in some cases different enough that I'm not 100% certain that these are the same states; Satlasan is apparently an early name for Satlasna, Umadi is I think an alternate name for Umri/Umari, while Motakotarna (
called Mota Kotarna by the 1909 Gazetteer), and is I think equivalent to Mota Kothasna of later sources. The 1880 Gazetter also in some cases doesn't explicitly say that the states mentioned were under Gadhwada Thana (
see here for an example featuring Hadol, Satlasan and Bhalasna, the three semi-jurisdictional states in the Thana). The 1909
Gazetteer lists these six states under their more recognisable names, in addition to Chandap, where a footnote helpfully informs us that "
Chandap is a matadari village and has no chief". While I think, based on my reading of admittedly incredibly spotty primary sources, that the matadari villages of Bawishi Thana and Vatrak Kantha Thana were governed collectively, other sources appear to imply that petty matadari villages elsewhere, such as in Gadhwada Thana and the Palanpur Agency, were indeed treated as full states alongside the petty hereditary holdings of more traditional states. Thus I'm including Chandap as a state of Gadhwada Thana. The 1916
Memoranda is rather confused. In its entry for Gadhwada Thana
it lists nine states; the aforementioned seven, plus Mohur and Gajipur (listed as Ghazipur by
worldstatesman and
hisatlas). On the other hand,
its list of states in the Mahi Kantha Agency as a whole only mentions the first six without mentioning Mohur, Gajipur or Chandap, I suspect because the latter three were matadari villages and, in common with other sources, these were apparently treated somewhat separately. I'll be counting them here, but it bears mentioning that not all sources do likewise. The 1939
Memoranda is a little different, as by then the Mahi Kantha and Palanpur Agencies had been merged into one unified Sabar Kantha Agency, and checking the lists of
semi-jurisdictional and
non-jurisdictional states for this Agency shows that it is apparently even more exclusive than the other sources, listing only five states; the classic six minus Mota Kotarna.
So, we have six full states mentioned in basically every source, plus what appear to be three matadari villages that have a spottier record but that do show up sporadically in period sources, for a total of nine states. This is the hard floor for how many states there were in the Thana, as I have period citations for all of them.
Digging deeper however only dredges up further confusion, particularly when looking to more modern resources for answers. Both worldstatesman and hisatlas list 15 states in Gadhwada Thana, and they almost exactly agree.
Worldstatesman lists the 15 states as; "
Includes 15 talukas: Ambavada, Bhalusna (1), Chandup, Dedasan, Ghazipur, Hadal (1), Mohur#, Mota Kothasna, Nana Kothasna, Nedardi, Satlasna (6), Timba, Udni, Umri, Vinchhi".
Hisatlas is different however because of course it is. It shows a tonne of small states not shown or mentioned elsewhere which is, understandably, problematic. On the other hand,
the new hisatlas map provides a brief description of the Thana and its component states, something it doesn't usually do; "
GADHWADA THANA (Under the jurisdiction of the Gadhwada Thana, there were 3 jurisdictional talukas, namely Satlasna, Bhalusna and Hadol. It also incorporated 7 non jurisdictional estates, including Umbri, Udni, Timba, Nedardi, Nana Kothasna and Dedasan, and 2 matadari estates of Ghazipur and Chandap. The Thana also consisted of the co-shared villages of Vinchhi, Ambavada and Mohor.)"
Notice anything off? Yeah, it states there were seven non-jurisdictional states but only mentions six, for a total of 14 named states. To hammer home a point I've made before,
the states of Gujarat were so complex and fractal that even the best of sources make mistakes every now and again, to say nothing of the less reliable sources. If I had to guess, Mota Kothasna is the missing one, as it's listed by basically every other source and appears on the map as a labelled state. I think this is just a simple cock-up, where the map-maker accidentally missed a state when typing up the description. Aside from that explainable discrepancy, the list tallies rather well with that provided by
worldstatesman, with the notable exception of the small states only shown on hisatlas.
To solve that little problem, I had to search even deeper.
So I made a search for the term "Gadhwada" in the online Indian government records site, and made an interesting discovery; almost all the states and entities shown in Gadhwada Thana by hisatlas had distinct accession agreements with the Indian govt, even those that do not show up in other sources. This is important as it apparently confirms the existence of a lot of the questionable states, although this also comes with caveats as several states claimed by hisatlas and worldstatesman do not show up in that list of records. The second way I tried to solve the problem was much more slapdash, but was still useful to do. I've previously sung the praises of the
Survey of India and the
literally thousands of maps they produced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries extensively. However, the details of Gadhwada Thana are apparently beyond the level of resolution provided by these maps, and as such there are basically no good maps of Gadhwada Thana besides
the new hisatlas map. I was able to cobble-together a collated map from four sheets of the
Survey of India's most detailed series (downloadable
here and
here), but that still leaves a lot to be desired; even at this resolution only Hadol is shown distinctly from the rest of the Thana. Between these two sources I was able to come up with some incredibly sketchy explanations for each of the questionable states listed by worldstatesman and shown on the new hisatlas map.
Firstly, five of the extra states presented by the new hisatlas map (
Kanedia,
Dharavania,
Kevdasan,
Vavdi and
Fatehpura) were almost certainly vassals of Hadol. Other maps (e.g. the collated map) assign their territory to Hadol, and while all five states get a separate accession agreement (see above), in all cases those agreements note that the state in question was "
(under Hadol)". Taken together, this evidence strongly implies that these states were indeed Hadol vassals and can thus be discarded. Of note, the sub-maps of the collated map of Gadhwada Thana list what I think are the populations of labelled villages; Kevdasan apparently had a population of
just 25 people in 1946. That's how insignificant it was.
Next up, two states that also occupied territory often allotted to Hadol, but where there is more evidence they were full states.
Udni and
Dedasan both get a mention among the old records, but appear on territory that maps commonly ascribe to Hadol. I suspect that they were previously Hadol vassals like the aforementioned states (hence why they don't appear in sources or on maps), but that these two later got upgraded to full states. I can't prove this was the case, but in the case of Udni I have some pretty good evidence in favour of a later upgrade in status;
this "Grant of Judicial powers to the Thakur of Undani" from 1933. The name is different, but as I've complained before, there were often multiple variant transliterations of state names in use among the sources, and this is close enough that I think it's a match. That report implies that Udni/Undani was only elevated in 1933. Based on my previous assertions, I think it is reasonable to assume that it was previously a Hadol vassal like the other five, so I have provisionally discounted it from the 1914 list. In contrast, in the case of
Dedasan in the absence of evidence in favour of my hypothesis I'll instead be assuming with heavy reservations that it was indeed a distinct state in 1914, but that other sources simply missed it (as they apparently missed other states).
I will also be adding two more states to my list;
Nedardi and
Nana Kothasna. They are mentioned by both
worldstatesman and
hisatlas (hisatlas confirms they were non-jurisdictional states) and get distinct
accession agreements. I haven't seen them mentioned in the primary sources, and there is always the possibility that they were later creations that didn't exist in 1914, but all the modern sources agree on them, so I'm counting them for now.
There are three more edge-cases;
Ambavada,
Bhatvas and
Vinchhi. These are, it should be mentioned, edge-cases of edge-cases, so I've discarded all three of them, but the reasons differ for each.
First up,
Vinchhi. It's mentioned by
hisatlas and
worldstatesman, but I can't for the life of me find a town of that name anywhere on the composite map. Hisatlas puts it way off to the side on the border between Idar and Dungarpur, but I've not seen an exclave, or any state really in that position in any period map I've seen, and even hisatlas isn't fully sure (it's labelled with a question mark). For the other states, even if borders aren't marked on the
Inch-per-mile maps, I can at least see the capital towns in the right place. Not so with Vinchhi, so it gets disqualified.
Next,
Ambavada; like Vinchhi, it is listed by
worldstatesman and
hisatlas and gets a separate
accession agreement, but on my composite map it's purported territory is shown as part of Idar. I think this is because Ambavada (AKA Ambawada) was a co-dominion (
as implied by the hisatlas caption) where Idar State owned a plurality of majority of the shares. This would, I think, be enough for the
Survey to consistently plot the estate as part of Idar, as as a co-dominion between petty landholders and a larger jurisdictional state, it de-facto functioned like a vassal of a vassal and would be discounted; as I've said before, I think the
Survey is using some variation on the 'no vassals of vassals' rule I'm employing to make this project simpler.
Finally, the most annoying one,
Bhatvas. This is an incredibly odd edge-case, as it only appears on
the new hisatlas map; it isn't mentioned by the description of the Thana provided by
that map quoted above,
or by worldstatesman. Confusingly however, it does have a separate
accession agreement. But here's the really interesting thing; on my composite map, a chunk of Gadhwada Thana in about the right place is instead labelled as an exclave of Palanpur. Now for the caveats. There is a town labelled "
Bhatuas" in the right place, but while it's fairly certain that this is indeed Bhatvas (right location) the labelling isn't entirely clear whether the town is in the Palanpur exclave or not. In addition, the shape and territory of the exclave on the
Survey of India maps doesn't line up with the territory of Bhatvas claimed by
the new hisatlas map. If those caveats are discarded however, then that scenario would handily explain the situation; Bhatvas was an exclave of Palanpur, probably an incredibly petty vassal state, that was also simultaneously under Gadhwada Thana. It should also be noted that the two sheets showing the Palanpur exclave (
45/D/16 Danta State (1946) and 45/D/12 Danta State (1946)) are both re-prints of older maps from the 1880's, the originals of which are not available from the site I've been linking to. The other two sheets (
46/A/09 Mehsana District (1946) and 46/A/13 Mehsana District (1946)), which appear to have been compiled later, do not show the bits of Palanpur that would be expected to peek into the frame of view if it were still there based on the former two maps, so again, there is some discrepancy here. However as a counterpoint, on the first two maps those exclaves are labelled as "
Palanpur, Rajputana", which is notable as Palanpur and Danta states would only be transferred under the Aegis of the Rajputana Agency in 1933 (
as seen here in the 1939 Memoranda, listing Palanpur and Danta in Rajputana), long after the original versions of the maps were published, providing evidence that those maps were indeed updated and revised with the re-prints. In addition, I also have some tenuous evidence that Palanpur exercised authority and jurisdiction over some parts of Gadhwada Thana, in the form of
a handful of vaguely-worded reports here. Taken together, with the somewhat contradictory cartographic clues discussed above, I have come to the tentative conclusion that Bhatvas was a petty vassal of Palanpur governed under the Aegis of Gadhwada Thana. As such, it can be discounted from the final list.
In all, Gadhwada Thana was incredibly annoying. The uncertainties surrounding the validity of states and the incompleteness of sources was second only to the Palanpur Agency (detailed at length below). In this case however, there was just enough material for me to cobble together and present an incredibly uncertain consensus list, in contrast with the Palanpur Agency where I honestly hit a brick wall.
With Gadhwada Thana summarised however, we can move onto that other fiendishly complicated area - the Palanpur Agency - shortly, as it finishes out the Mahi Kantha Agency. As one final point of order however, when mapping the states onto the R-QBAM, a few modest mergers had to take place. Katosan, a semi-jurisdictional state surrounded by the states of Katosan Thana but not a part of it, was merged in with Katosan Thana (I honestly don't know why the British government didn't just add it to the Thana - there are plenty of cases of semi-jurisdictional states that were also part of a Thana, why not simplify things). Aside from that, Varsoda was merged into Mansa, Vasna was merged into Pethapur, Ramas was amalgamated with Dabha, while Ranasan was merged with Mohanpur (for at least basic info on all of those states,
the states list in the 1880 Gazetteer is your bes bet). The Thanas were of course shown cumulatively.
