Cover; Nomadic Narratives; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; List of Tables; List of Abbreviations; Acknowledgements; Glossary; Note on Transliteration, Translation and Dates; Contemporary Place Names and their Nineteenth Century Spellings; Introduction; The Frontiers of Thar; Rajputs in the Frontiers; Indirect Rule and the Frontiers; The Frontiers of Memory; A Note on Sources; Plan of the Book; Chapter 1: Geographical Imagination and Narratives of a Region; Networks of Circulation in the Thar Desert; The (Un)Making of the Thar in the Nineteenth Century Munhata Nainsi's Marwar: Frontiers of Polity and GeographyBoundaries of James Tod's Rajast'han; Chapter 2: Mobility, Polity, Territory; Historicizing Itinerancy: The Itinerant Warriors of the Thar; The 'Long' Sixteenth Century and the Evolution of a 'Rajput' Polity; The Making of the 'Rajput': Genealogy as History/Genealogy as Polity; A 'Mughal' Rajput or a 'Rajput' Mughal?; Post-Mughal Polity and the Rajput on the Frontier; Rajputana Agency: Politics of Indirect Rule and the Making of the Rajput; Chapter 3: Itinerants of the Thar: Mobility and Circulation; The Travelers; Pastoralists Pastoralists and Sedentary CommunitiesTraders and Carriers: The Commerce of Circulation; Itinerant Menial Artisanal Groups; Bardic and Genealogist Communities; Chapter 4: Expanding State Contracting Space: The Thar in the Nineteenth Century; Sedentarisation and Settlement; Fodder, Fallows and Forests; The Ordering of Trading Networks; Roads and Railways: The New Channels; The Question of Salt; The Outlaws; Chapter 5: Narratives of Mobility and Mobility of Narratives; Bardic Narrations: Rajput-Charan Exchanges; Narratives from below: Re-appropriating Pabuji Devnarayan: The Cowherd Warrior/God/KingA Song and its Singers: Dhola-Maru; Conclusions; Nomadic Narratives in the Frontier; Bibliography; Primary Sources; Unpublished documents; Secondary Sources; Appendix-I; Jodhpur King List; Appendix-II; Bikaner King List; Appendix-III; Jaisalmer King List; Index

"Discusses the emergence of socio-historical identities in the Thar Desert with the mobility of its inhabitants