Archives of the State Governments

The source material in the state archives comprise the records of (i) the former British Indian provinces, (ii) the erstwhile princely states which were incorporated in the Indian Union after 1947, and (iii) the foreign administrations other than those of the British. Apart from these, the records of those Indian powers which were taken over by the British, for instance, the archives of the Kingdom of Lahore (popularly known as Khalsa Darbar records from 1800 to 1849), are important source material. Another important collection of

the pre-British public archives in India is the Peshwa Daftar housed in the Alienation Office, Pune. It forms the most valuable single source for the study of Maratha history for a period of almost a century before the fall of the Peshwas. For studying the history of the princely states of Rajasthan, viz., Jaipur, Bikaner, Jodhpur, Udaipur, etc., the archives of these states, now housed in the Rajasthan State Archives at Bikaner, are valuable. Similarly, the history of Dogra rule from 1846 in Jammu and Kashmir can be studied in the valuable collection of state papers housed at Jammu. The other significant archives of the princely states are those of Gwalior, Indore, Bhopal and Rewa, all in Madhya Pradesh, Travancore and Cochin in Kerala, Mysore in Karnataka and

Kolhapur in Maharashtra.