Guest Lecture on Traveler’s Perspective on the life in the Maratha Camp

The Department of History organized a Guest lecture on How to use Rajasthan State Archive records for the Students of B.A IV Semester & VI Semester on 16th March 2019. The Guest Speaker on this Occasion was Dr. Vijay Kumar Vashishtha (Former Head of History Department in Maharshi Saraswati University, Ajmer). Prof. Sharad Rathore, Head of Department of History introduced the speaker and talked about relevance of the Archival documents for research in history, which would help in the preparation of their Project work. In his lecture Dr. V.K. Vashishtha discussed about the relevance of the foreign traveller’s account as a source of History. He said that the narratives of different travelers are a very important source of information of the contemporary times and help us understand the socio-cultural milieu of the period and sometimes they contain many observations which may be of travail value to the native historian who doesn’t reflect as it is inherent part of the culture and lived too. However, he also pointed out that these records need to be corroborated with other source too as sometimes the foreign travelers are unable to understand the culture and the language and hence may not be able to interpret it rightly. Dr. Vashishtha discussed the case of Broughton who has written about his Indian experiences and his accounts often Maratha camp are of great interest and help us understand the caste system and the society in the 18^th Century in India.