Historical feudal title of the Indian subcontinent
Thakur is a historical feudaltitle of the Indian subcontinent. It is also used as a surname in the present day. The female variant of the title is Thakurani or Thakurain, and is also used to describe the wife of a Thakur.
Portrait of Thakur Raja Bakhtawar Singh made by Fateh Muhammad around 1880 in western Rajasthan, probably Bikaner.
There are varying opinions among scholars about its origin. Some scholars suggest that it is not mentioned in the Sanskrit texts preceding 500 BCE, but speculates that it might have been a part of the vocabulary of the dialects spoken in northern India before the Gupta Empire. It is viewed to have been derived from word Thakkura which, according to several scholars, was not an original word of the Sanskrit language but a borrowed word in the Indian lexis from the Tukhara regions of Inner Asia. Another view-point is that Thakkura is a loan word from the Prakrit language.
Scholars have suggested differing meanings for the word, i.e. "god", "lord", and "master of the estate". Academics have suggested that it was only a title, and in itself, did not grant any authority to its users "to wield some power in the state".
^Ram Dayal Rakesh (2007). Vidyapati, the Greatest Poet of Mithila. Greater Janakpur Area Development Council. p. 17. ISBN9789937201483. Archived from the original on 19 March 2023. Retrieved 9 April 2023. Vidyapati : As a Devotional Poet " His main works were complicated treatises in Sanskrit and although he did not totally abandon songs writing in Maithili, his Maithili poetry after 1406 comprised hymns to Siva, Vishnu, Durga and ... He was born in the Maithil Brahmin's family which belongs to Kashyapa Gotra. His family was very renowned in scholarship and statesmanship in Mithila for culture and literature. His family is closely associated with the court of the Karnata kings. His surname was Thakur.
^Frankel, Francine R.; Rao, M. S. A.; Madhugiri, Shamarao; Rao, Ananthapadmanabha (1989). Dominance and State Power in Modern India. Oxford University Press. p. 137. ISBN978-0-19-562098-6. Archived from the original on 10 April 2023. Retrieved 22 January 2023. Thakur and rajput have been used interchangeably to refer to castes of Kshatriya rank/