Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/49

 •

INTRODUCTION.

remains of the Bhar kingdom, and

its

traces

XXXIX

were hardly effaced

when they were menaced by

a far greater danger in the rise of a strong Muhammadan state in their close neighbourhood at Jaunpur. The ablest of the so-called Eastern emperors, Ibrahim Shah Sharqi, had his attention especially attracted by the country which lay directly in the path from his capital to Delhi, and used every effort to bring it more closely under the control of his government. His lieutenants were established in every principal town, and Muhammadan law ofl&cers were appointed to administer their unknown and partial system of justice. For a time these things were borne, and the most powerful chieftains sought refuge in flight but a purely artificial regime can rarely long survive its founder, and the death of Shah Ibrdhim was the signal for the rise of the people. The foreign agents of his policy were massacred, and the lead of the Hindu reaction was taken by Raja Tilok Chand, by far the most important of the native chieftains who have from time to time left a mark on Oudh history. Of a family possibly descended from the old emperors of Kanauj, he combined, with the consideration commanded by high birth, a natural capacity for statesmanship, and a mind singularly free from the prejudices of his race. Eeserving for himself a tract, subsequently known as the twenty-two parganas, and stretching from Lucknow to the confines of the Partabgarh district, he constituted himself judge in the disputes between neighbouring chieftains, and asserted more than once his power of reinforcing the warrior class from the most worthy among the inferior elements The feebleness which marked the decay of the Afof his army. ghan empire seemed to have again brought within the sphere of the possibilities the realization of the idea of a large Hindu state paramount authority of the most powerful prince over a number of subordinate chieftains, each exercising undivided power within hundred years of comparative peace, his own territories. during which the ruling clans established more firmly their hold upon the country, and brought the lands at a distance from their central forts under cultivation and the control of the younger offshoots of their houses, were followed by the whirlwind of Bdbar's

—

A

invasion.

The great Afghan

captains

whom

that prince defeated in

Oudh have left no representatives, and the four pages describing the events which attended his entry to Ajodhya, where it is possible that the Hindu chiefs rallied round the centre of their reliThe gion, are missing from all the known copies of his memoirs. mosque, which preserves ancient an remaining is only record