Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/55

 xlv

INTRODUCTION.

bloodshed and fewer of the horrors which attended the struggle elsewhere, Gonda presents so typical an instance of the process which was going on all over the province that no apology is needed for substituting the plain story of its events for a more general description. Raja Datt Singh had extended the conquests of his father and grandfather, and ruled over a small state which stretched from the Gogra to the Kuwana, covering an area of about twelve hundred square miles. When Saddat Khan re-established Muhammadan supremacy in Oudh, the rdja extorted from his weakness a semi-independent position, which left him in undisturbed possession of his fief on the payment of an annual tribute. This position was maintained till near the end of the eighteenth century, when Shiva Parshad Singh, the last of the real rajas, was defeated and slain in battle with the Lucknow forces led by a British oflScer. The chief of the servants of his raj was Chain Pdnde, a banker, who had brought his capital from Ikauna to trade with it under the Gonda chieftain. The death of Shiva Parshad Singh left a legal heir in his nephew, Guman Singh, a lad of ten years of age, and a brother, Hind<ipat Singh, to administer affairs during the minority. Chain Pdnde, the old banker, had died, and his three sons, Karia, Bakhtawar, and Mardan, commanded the Gonda militia and exercised an unremitting vigilance over the interests of the youthful raja. It was not till they discovered that his life was in daily peril from the machinations of his guardian, who would by his death acquire an undisputed right to the succession, that they interHindiipat Singh and all his children were murdered, fered. and the Oudh Government, making the event a pretext for disregarding its previous engagements, sent a force to occupy the few years of captistate and take Gum^n Singh prisoner. marriage his with the daughter by ended were vity at Lucknow Kotwa, whose of influence as a Das Jagjiwan of the celebrated Muhammadan court attention at a even secured religious teacher territories he his discovered return to his On to his demands. that they had been made the appanage of the Bahii Begam, and that her officers exercised rule and collected the rents. His subsistence was provided for by the grant of a few villages and a small annual payment in cash from the income of his raj. In time the intelligent and humane officer, Saif-ud-daula, who administered the country for the Muhammadan Government, gave place to feeble and incompetent successors, who found the best security and comparative wealth for their collections in the influence hand, the villagers other of the dispossessed raja. On the their natural head, and themselves were apt to look up to him as

A