ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a matrimonial alliance between Mysore and the princely states of northern India and interprets the nature of this alliance, and of its partial failure, by questioning their discourse and practice of kinship. It employs a structural analysis of kinship. The chapter explains an 'imperial space', where geographically separated and culturally diverse territories were connected to each other in one dimension. It was in this space that the new feudal hierarchy was established, and Indian royal families began to form new matrimonial alliances. The marriage alliance between Mysore and North Indian royal families shows not only the heterogeneity of the 'homogenising hierarchy', but also an unexpected divergence from the expected result of this homogenising project. By the late seventeenth century, the Urs had changed their nature from semi-autonomous local chiefs to subordinates dependant on the centralised government and royal authority, the Wodeyar.
