Baba Budan Archives · Individual Document Record
1873 — The Inam Settlement Record
BD-INAM-1873-01
A surviving copy of the remarks of the Inam Assistant and the final orders of the Inam Superintendent at the settlement in January 1873. The record is particularly important because it preserves an official nineteenth-century account of the earlier history of the Baba Budan Inams while identifying the basis of that account as the Inamdar’s statement and connected documents.
The 1873 Inam Settlement Record
The heading on the surviving page identifies both the character of the record and its settlement context.
PDF p.33 is headed “Copy of the remarks of the Inam Assistant and final orders of the Inam Superintendent at the Settlement in January 1873.” The page then discusses the institution at the Baba Budan Hills and recounts an earlier history of its Inams.
The importance of the document lies not only in the historical narrative it records, but also in the way that narrative is framed. The record states that the earlier history appeared from the Inamdar’s statement and documents therewith connected. Baba Budan Archives therefore preserves the distinction between the 1873 official record and the earlier events described within it.
Evidence distinction
The 1873 settlement pages are themselves surviving nineteenth-century documentary evidence. They are not, however, the original Anegondi grant or the original Purnayya order. Those earlier events are reported within the 1873 record.
Anegondi, Purnayya and the Inam Villages
The settlement record preserves a compact historical narrative that must be attributed to its stated evidentiary basis.
The record describes the institution as ancient and states that its origin was believed to go back many centuries.
It records that the Inams were originally granted by the Anegondi chiefs. This is a statement preserved in the 1873 settlement record, not a surviving original Anegondi grant presently held by Baba Budan Archives.
The record then states that the earlier Inams were resumed by Purnayya and that villages were given in their room.
The page names Suraguppa and Dasarahalli in connection with the substituted villages and describes the grant as Sarwamanyam.
The continuation on PDF p.34 records the settlement authorities’ treatment of the grant and the final settlement order, providing the contemporary administrative layer of the document.
Evidence, Not Retrospective Certainty
The document is strong evidence for the 1873 administrative record and more limited evidence for the much earlier history it recounts.
It Establishes
- That the Inam settlement authorities recorded these remarks and orders in January 1873.
- That the 1873 record itself attributes its earlier historical account to the Inamdar’s statement and connected documents.
- That the record expressly mentions the Anegondi chiefs in connection with the original grant tradition.
- That it expressly mentions Purnayya in connection with resumption and substitution of Inams.
- That Suraguppa and Dasarahalli appear in the recorded account of the substituted villages.
- That the settlement authorities proceeded to record an administrative treatment of the grant in 1873.
It Does Not, By Itself, Establish
- The existence or exact wording of an original Anegondi grant instrument.
- The existence or exact wording of an original Purnayya Nirup or order.
- That every detail of the earlier historical narrative was independently verified by the 1873 officials.
- That later legal title to every parcel can be determined solely from these two pages.
- That a later summary of this record should be treated as a substitute for the original pages reproduced below.
The Genuine 1873 Settlement Pages
Both images below are extracted directly from the uploaded 43-page master PDF.
Original image extract policy
These are genuine source-page extracts, not reconstructed facsimiles. The complete 43-page PDF remains the master source. Handwriting is summarized conservatively; uncertain words should be checked against the scan before any verbatim transcription is published.
A Documentary Bridge to an Earlier Inam History
The 1873 pages occupy an important position between older historical claims and later administrative records.
For Baba Budan Archives, this record is valuable precisely because it tells us how nineteenth-century settlement officials encountered the earlier history. The officials did not present the Anegondi and Purnayya material as newly occurring events; they recorded an inherited history available to them through the Inamdar’s statement and connected documents.
That makes the record significant without requiring the archive to overstate it. It is direct evidence of the 1873 settlement record and a later official reference to the earlier Anegondi and Purnayya history. Until the underlying earlier instruments are independently recovered, those evidentiary layers should remain separate.
Master Source and Archival Method
Master PDF
Cash grant of Rs. 50 mensem + Inam grant data, 43 scanned pages. The 1873 settlement extract appears at PDF pp.33–34.
Related Collections
This record belongs primarily to Inam & Muzrai and should also be cross-linked from the Master Timeline and later records that refer back to the earlier Inam history.
BD-INAM-1873-01 · Directly Examined Record
Preserving the Difference Between Record and Recollection
The strength of the 1873 settlement record is not that it magically converts every earlier tradition into contemporary proof. Its strength is that it preserves what nineteenth-century Inam authorities recorded, identifies the material on which that historical account rested, and provides a documentary point from which the earlier history can be investigated further.