Charity's venue: Representing Indian kingship in the monumental pilgrim rest houses of the Maratha Rajas of Tanjavur, 1761–1832

Abstract

This dissertation examines representations of indigenous kingship in the "little kingdom" of Tanjavur in South India, particularly the institutional and architectural aspects of the networks of royal chattrams, or pilgrim rest houses built by the Maratha Court in Tanjavur in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The methodology is interdisciplinary, applying both ethnohistorical and art historical approaches to the built environments of specific chattrams of the Maratha court. Archival data from the chattram records of the Maratha period, as well as geographical and architectural analyses stemming from extensive fieldwork, are combined to historicize more fully the discursive spaces of the early colonial encounter in South India during this period. The thesis of this dissertation is that Raja Serfoji II (r. 1798-1832) deployed the imagery of his own royal processions in the iconography of the monumental entrance hall of his Muktambal Chattram. Through a comparison of the carved panels of the two largest chattrams' entrance halls, the 1761 Yamunamal Chattram of Pratap Singh (r. 1739-1763) and Serfoji's 1802 Muktambal Chattram, I show a shift in representational strategy, from the revealing of interior courtly prerogatives in Pratap Singh's chattram, to the projection of exterior royal prerogatives, especially royal procession, in Serfoji's chattram. This architectural analysis is combined with an examination of the geographical zones of the Maratha kingdom used by successive kings in the construction of courtly monuments. Despite the constraints of his titular status, Raja Serfoji II combined inherited strategies of benevolent patronage, long associated with the tradition of endowing and constructing chattrams on the pilgrim routes to Rameshwaram, with innovative representations of his own royal prerogatives, to assert his royal authority, not in the center of his kingdom, but out in the territory of the kingdom he had ceded to the British in 1798.

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