India, before its independence was divided into a score of kingdom's and royalty's, so called the Princely states. The British ruled India with two administrative systems. One was ‘Provinces’ and the other ‘Princely States’. About 60% of the Indian sub-continent's territory were Provinces and 40% were Princely States. Provinces were British territories completely under British control. Princely States were states in British India with local ruler or king with honorary titles like Maharaja, Raja, Maharana, Rana, Nizam, Badshah and other such titles meaning king or ruler in different Indian languages. When the British gave the Indian sub-continent independence in 1947 there were 562 Princely States. Some of them like Kashmir, Mysore and Hyderabad were as large as England. There were also smaller Princely states like Junagad, Udaipur, Janjira, Aundh and Cochin. On the sub pages you will see a categorical listing of most of the princely states which ran its own postal system. You can find an exhaustive listing of Indian Princely state stamp issues (Both genuine and forgery) on the following URL as well: www.princelystates.com Here is a little royal album featuring the whos' who of Royal India. www.stampsandphotos.com ©2006