The Hollow Crown reconstructs the sociocultural history of a warrior polity in south India between the fourteenth and the twentieth centuries.

List of illustrations; List of maps; List of tables; Preface; Glossary of terms; Map of the Madras Presidency, 1900; Map of Pudukkottai State; The Tondaiman line of Pudukkottai; Part I. Introduction: 1. The study of state and society in India; Part II. History and Ethnohistory: 2. The historical context of the old regime; 3. The discourse of kingship: representations of authority in the old regime; Part III. A Little Kingdom in the Old Regime: 4. Pudukkottai and the old regime: gift, order, and authority in a south Indian little kingdom; 5. The early history of the Pudukkottai region; 6. Tondaiman Raj: 1686-1801; Part IV. Social Relations of a Little Kingdom: 7. Royal Kallars; 8. Political hegemony and social relations: caste in Pudukkottai; 9. Temples and society; Part V. Colonial Mediations: Contradictions Under the Raj: 10. Agrarian rebellion? Last gasp of the old regime; 11. The colonization of the political order: land settlements, political intervention and structural change; 12. Temples and conflict: the changing context of worship; 13. The theatre state: princely politics in colonial south India; Part VI. Conclusion: 14. Ethnohistory and the Indian state; Appendix: land and privilege: inams in Pudukkottai; References; List of records and abbreviations; List of archives and record offices; Index.