Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/635

 GON title of raja.

His family

priest

557

was one Dalla Pdnde, whose descend'aBts are

among the most turbulent of the small zamindars ofMahadewa. Of him it is said that he had two syces, Sher and Salim, who went to Delhi, and by their brave conduct in war rose to the command of the imperial forces, and found themselves powerful enough to expelHumaydn and usurp the throne of India. In their exalted position they did not forget their old master the Pande, and sent him a farmdn appointing him raja of Gonda. As a Brahman, he felt an aversion to rule, and passed the title on to Mdn Singh, in whose family it thenceforth remained. If any value can be attached to this story, it serves to corroborate the otherwise probable chronology which would make the final establishment of the Gonda raj contemporaneous with the wars in Oudh which marked the opening of Akbar's reign. Eaja Man Singh left four sons, of which the eldest, Raja Lachhman Singh, succeeded to the chieftainship, and the younger were provided for by a grant of, it is said, six hundred and forty villages, stretching from Khargupur Chandpur to Manikapur. Their representatives, the Thakurs of Bidhianagar, Kaimi, and Garhi, now only hold a few villages in the western comer of Manikapur and Chandipur in Mahadewa. Lachhman Singh was succeeded by his son Nirbahan Singh, who, like his grandfather, had four sons, the eldest of whom was Raja Durjan Singh, from whose younger brothers, B^n Singh and Bir Sah, are descended the Thakurs of Birdiha, Hindunagar, and Bishambharpur. Durjan Singh died childless, and was succeeded by his remaining brother. Raja Amar Singh, in whose time the Janwars of Ikauna, then at the zenith of their power, crossed the Kuwdna and possessed themselves of a large tract in the north of the Gonda raj, an encroachment which the Bisens were not strong enough to repel.

—

The most brilliant period in the annals of the dynasty commenced with the accession of Raja Ram Singh at the beginning of the latter half of the saventeenth century. His first act was to destroy the fort at Bhatpui on the Bislihi, which Raja Mahd, Singh had erected during his occupation. The feeble successors to the Janwar r^j were unable to offer him any serious resistance, and he finally vindicated, the claims of his family to the whole of the debated land between the Bisuhi and the Kuwana. Up to his time the rule of the Raikwars had extended right up to the edge of the uparhar, within a few miles of Gonda itself. The immediate propinquity of a possibly hostile neighbour exposed his capital to the risk of being plundered and burnt at any time when his arms were employed at a distance, and urgently demanded a rectification of frontiers. In a series of desultory fights he managed to extend his encroachments over the greater part of what is now the Paharapur pargana, and wrested seventy-four villages from his rivals, including them permanently within the borders of his raj. His old age was unblessed with offspring, and he had recourse to the services of Ganga Gir Goshafn, the most noted of his time among the holy men of Ajodhya. The saint had two favourite disciples, Datt and Bhawani, and at the urgent entreaty of the raja he despatched them to Benares with a direction that they were to insert their heads into a grating which overlooked the Ganges, and as the guillotine-like door descended from above to decapitate them, to pray to the river who received their lives that in exchange for each a son might be given to the Gonda chieftain. The sacrifice was efficacious, and two sons were born, who were named after the