Rajputana, also called Rajwar means the “Land of the Rajputs”. It was a region in South Asia that included mainly the present-day Indian state of Rajasthan, as well as parts of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, and some adjoining areas of Sindh in modern-day southern Pakistan.
The main settlements to the west of the Aravalli Hills came to be known as Rajputana, early in the Medieval Period. The name was later adopted by British government as the Rajputana Agency for its dependencies in the region of the present-day Indian state of Rajasthan.
The 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.
The largest states were Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Bikaner, Jaipur, and Udaipur. In 1947 the consolidation of states began by stages, as a result of which the state of Rajasthan came into being. Some of Rajputana’s former territory in the southeast is now part of Madhya Pradesh state, and some in the southwest is now part of Gujarat state.
The region was previously long known as Gujratra (an early form of “Gujarat”), before it came to be called Rajputana during the medieval period.
The area of Rajputana is estimated to be 343,328 square km (132,559 square miles) and breaks down into two geographic divisions: