Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/294

 BAL

216

demand

fixed at Es. 2,37,090, giving a revenue rate per acre of Ks. 0-15-2 area, and Rs. 1-3-2 on cultivation, and Ks. 1-4-10 per head

on the whole

The rates on ordinary villages were very much higher, and of pppulation. ranged from Rs. 1-6-0 to Rs. 2-3-0 per acre, but the average was reduced by the large sandy or marshy tracts which were entered as cultivation, though the sowings were in the one case with the object rather of reclamation than of immediate profit, and in the other case only of the half wild pea which is used for fodder, and not divided with the ordinary grain Attention was also paid to the fact that, in a country of grain rents, crops. the out-turn of rent is much more variable and^dependent on the seasons than where money rents are in use. As a reward for his loyal and distinguished services in the mutiny, the Maharaja has been allowed a deduction of 10 per cent, on this assessment, which has also been fixed for perpetuity. The receipts of Government are further reduced by Rs. 20,235 of revenue remissions, the greater part of which are for the life of the present Maharaja. With the exception of a few very small independent holdings, not amounting to ^ per cent, of the area, the whole pargana is the sole property of the Maharaja. The sub-proprietary right cases have not yet been all decided, but the majority of claims have been dismissed, and it is not likely that such rights will be decreed in more than a very few villages. For many centuries previous to the first Muhammadan invasion, this must have been a densely populated district, as it was the centre in turns but all that is of powerful Buddhist, Brahmanical, and Jain kingdoms known of its earlier history is connected with the ancient town of Sahet Mahet, and has been recounted at length in that article, so it need not be repeated here. On the destruction of the last local dynasty by the Rathors of Kanauj, about 1072 A. D., we find one of those phenomena so common The remnants of the defeated in Indian history, and so diflScult to realize. ruling clan migrate in a body to the hills, the once populous villages become waste, and the fertile fields of wheat and rice give place to a dense jungle of sal and mahua ; fever and dysentery complete the work and three



centuries afterwards, when the curtain of history is again lifted, the new settlers find a trackless forest, broken here and there by rare clearances of aboriginal tribes, Bhars and Tharus, fever-proof by constitution, earning a precarious livelihood by the chase and rude tilth, and owing a distant allegiance to the kingdom of Gorakhpur. The new comers were the Janwars who assert that they were originally Chauhans of the Narbada valley, and who arrived in this district towards the middle of the fourteenth curious tradition relates that as one of the earliest of their century.

Dom

A

Rajas was hunting, he saw a wolf pick up a child and carry it to his den. The Raja pursued it, and after having followed up the winding passages of the cavern for some time, came suddenly upon an open space, where he saw a venerable faqir sitting with the boy on his knees. He recognized at once that the wolf was nothing less than a jogi, who had assumed that form, and prostrated himself in silent reverence. In return for his religious conduct, the holy man blessed him and his offspring, that for all time to come no wolf should prey on a Janwar's child, and the blessing is said to exist in full efficacy to the present day. The first six of the Janwar chiefs ruled in undivided power at Ikauna, and their history belongs to that pargana. No separate pargana of Balrampur then existed, but the whole