• List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; Glossary; Introduction; 1. Honour, status and state formation in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Maravar country; 2. Cosmological fragmentation in the public sphere; 3. Domain formation in mid-nineteenth-century Ramnad; 4. Human and divine palaces in the fragmentation of monarchical cosmology; 5. Ritual performances, the ruling person and the public; 6. Raja Baskara Setupati and the emergence of a new political style; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

'Kingship and Political Practice in Colonial India is a solid piece of scholarship. Professor Price is at her best when she treats the litigation of the nineteenth century and its effects on the kingdoms of Ramnad and Sivagangai … a useful reminder that present day politics in India (or for that matter much of the rest of the world) have deep roots that go directly back to precolonial times.' Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society