ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 looks at the system of managing diversity at a local level and how it was connected with the larger state, market and religious systems in the Khurda kingdom and the local community of Garh Manitri in the eighteenth century. It gives details of the ‘system of entitlements’, which prescribed the rights and duties of community members who offered administrative, military, economic, ritual and religious services for the local community and the state in lieu of shares of the local produce. The king was the central sacrificer and the grantor of entitlements, the semantics of which were represented in the terms ‘service’ and ‘duty’ both in historical records and in myths, legends and ritual performances. Since the Khurda king was considered the earthly representative of the universal god Jagannātha, the positions of local community members in the socio-politico-cosmic whole were guaranteed through their performance of prescribed duties and ‘eating the land’ as ascribed by the king. A person’s everyday activity was a meaningful sacrificial offering to the local goddess, the king and Jagannātha, which in turn secured his/her place in the local community, the kingdom and the universe. Hence, I refer to this system as the ‘sacrificer state and sacrificial community’. There were significant interrelationships between caste, community ethos, patriotism and religious devotionalism. The importance of the local community should also be understood in relation to the development of the market economy and military–administrative technology in eighteenth-century early modern Orissa. The local communities––each centred on a fort in Khurda––functioned as important local military–administrative centres for the state. They were also the basic sites of production in the hinterlands that provided raw cotton for manufacturing textile and rice for the market that thrived on Indian Ocean trade.
