Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057345).pdf/138

 130 КВА the time of Pitra Sen, who became king of Bhárath Khand.* There they reigned for eighteen generations, and then they moved to Kaphár, in Ku- maun, where forty-two more of them successively satupon the throne. The forty-second, Sárangdeo, emigrated to Kathaur; thence the thirty-ninth from Sárangdeo, Tirloki Pál, having married the daughter of the rája of Bhot, got twenty-two parganas as a dowry, moved to his new estate in the hills, and settled in Ajmer. This twentieth descendant was Arjun Mal, a contemporary of the emperor Akbar. They claim then to have governed in different parts of India for more than 220 generations prior to the sixteenth century. In spite of this long descent, it may be remarked that the family is hardly considered Chhattri at all; and even when they managed to marry their daughters to the Ahbans, Janwárs, or Raikwárs, they had to pay large sums as bribes. Further, none of these places or parganas appear on the map of Kumaun, and the whole story is most probably one of those fictions in which the bards of India are so fertile. Arjun Mal went to visit the Emperor Akbar at Delhi, and on his pass- ing through the bazar, all the metalt dishes exposed for sale on either side of the way burst into pieces. The emperor, hearing of this, invited the mountain chief to court, and took care that a phúl ntensil should be deposited in the room where the interview was to take place. As soon as Arjun Mal entered the vessel was shivered to pieces. Akbar inquired the reason, and was told that as Arjun Mal was a Súrajbans, a descendant of the sun, the rays of divine light which still emanated from his person were of sufficient power to crack so mcan a metal as phúl. The emperor gave him a jágír, the title of mahárája, and fixed his tribute at twenty- five gold mohurs, five ponies, eleven yaks' tails, and fifteen musk-deer. Díp Singh was a descendant of Arjun Mal; his daughter was asked in inarriage by the king of Naipál, Ran Bahadur Sáh; and a refusal was followed by war about 1790 A.D. This was probably true, as the Gurkhas, although also claiming to be children of the sun, are still known to be of low aboriginal origin. The war with Naipá), however, mainly arose from other and broader causes of differ- A general account of it and of the Surajbans chiefs who occupied Kumaun and Naipál need not be given here. There were four principali- ties in the latter country; Pátan, Khatmándu, Bancha, Bhatgáon, which were all successively conquered by the Gurkhas. The Khairigarh family had no connexion, as far as is now known, with any of the above; as already stated, they occupied an estate at Ajmer, Their best known and prin- cipal residence was Dhoti, fifty miles north of Khairigarh; so much is cer- tain, but all the other details, both of the family origin and of their posi- tion and rights in Naipál, are covered with doubt and obscurity. They claim to have always held Kanchanpur in sovereignty; but this was included in Khairigarh (at least Dhoti, Kalkandan, Bhartha, Rajhat were placed in Khairigarh) in the reign of Muhammad Shah, and the ence. t Phúl.
 * Pripsep's Tables, 332.