Page:A Comprehensive History of India Vol 1.djvu/566

 532 Jll.s'](jJtv oy JM>iA. ,liooK J II.

AD 1750. Deaths wiiich happened so opportunely for Surajuh Dowlah might, without

uncliaritablt'iiess, have been attributed to hi.s agency, but all writers agi-ee in

regarding tiiem as natural. Their effect was to allow him to take the benefit

Tw,) rival of all the arrangements which Ali Verdy had made in his favour. It soon

claimants,. . ,

t.. throno appeared, however, that his title to the nahobshij) wa« not to remain unchal- ""'*'' lenged. Gheseety Begum, Ali Verdy's daughter, had succeeded to the wealth of her late husband Nuazisli, and saw no means of saving it from the rapacity of the new nabob, excej^t by placing herself at the head of a powerful party. Her sex made it impossible for her to claim the government in her own name, and she therefore set up a competitor in. the person of an infant two years old, the son of a deceased brother of Surajah Dowlah. Another competitor appeared in the person of his cousin, Shokut Jung, governor of Pumeah. Could he have succeeded, the inhabitants of Bengal would not have gained much by the change, as it would have been difficult to choose between them, so closely did they resemble each other in ignorance and profligacy. The title of the claimant set up by Gheseety Begum was evidently bad, as the father of the infant was only a younger brother. Not only, therefore, had Surajah Dowlah justice on his side when he resisted the Begum's attempt, but he was also fur- nished with a plausible pretext for the measures he adopted against her. As his owTi aunt and Ali Verdy's daughter, she was certainly entitled to be treated with all the leniency consistent with safety, but it is not easy to condemn him for dispossessing her of a palace, where all the discontented spirits of the capital would have rallied around her, and depriving her of treasures which had been, and would in all probability continue to be employed in secretly undermining or openly assailing his government.

Origin of ^ Hindoo, of the name of Raibiillub, who had become dewan to XuazisL

quarrel be- "

tween Sura- after the assassiuatlon of Hossein Coolv Khan, and made common cause with

jah Dowlah ...... *'

and Bengal liis widow, bciug perfectly aware of the treatment which awaited him from Su- presi ency. ^,^^^y^ Dowlah, had rcsolved, even before Ali Verdy's death, to provide against the danger by removing his famjly and treasures. The difficulty was to find a place where they would be beyond the nabob's reach. They were then in Dacca, and the plan he adopted was to send them away in the charge of his son Kissendass, under pretence of making a pilgrimage to the celebrated Temple of Juggernaut, on the coast of Orissa. In prosecuting this intended pilgrimage, Kissenda.ss proceeded with several loaded boats down the Ganges, as if to enter the Ba}' of Bengal by one of its mouths, but stopped short, and sailed upwards till he reached the Jellinghee, by which the Ganges communicates with the Hooghly. He was thus enabled to enter tlie latter river. Tliis was in fact the precon- certed scheme, for his real destination was not Juggernaut, but Calcutta. HLs father had prevailed with Mr. Watts, the chief of the Company's factory at Cossimbazar, to apply to the presidency for permission to Kissendass and liis family to halt for some days in Calcutta. It does not appear very distinctly