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Rājputāna (Rajasthani/Hindi: राजपूताना) meaning “Land of the Rajputs” was a princely state in India, that included mainly the present-day Indian state of Rajasthan along with parts of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and some adjoining areas of Sindh in modern-day Southern Pakistan. The main settlements were to the west of aravalli hills which was known as Gurjaratra, the earlier form of Gujrat before it came to be known as Rajputana, early in the Medieval Period. The name was later adopted by British government as Rajputana Agency for its dependencies in the region of the present-day Indian state of Rājasthān. Rajputana agency included 18 princely states, two chiefships and the British district of Ajmer-Merwara. This British official term remained until its replacement by "Rajasthan" in the constitution of 1949.
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Rajputana
Name
George Thomas (Military Memories) was the first in 1800, to term this region the Rajputana Agency. The historian John Keay in his book, India: A History, stated that the Rajputana name was coined by the British, but that the word even achieved a retrospective authenticity: in an 1829 translation of Ferishta's history of early Islamic India, John Briggs discarded the phrase Indian princes, as rendered in Dow's earlier version, and substituted Rajpoot princes.
The region was previously long known as Gujratra(an early form of "Gujarat"), before it came to be called Rajputana during the medieval period.
Geography
The area of Rajputana is estimated to be 343,328 square km (132,559 square miles) and breaks down into two geographic divisions:
The whole area forms the hill and plateau country between the north Indian plains and the main plateau of peninsular India.