Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057345).pdf/271

 KHE 263 and the broad facts of the tenures will be apparent from it. It has several points of interest. One is that none of these estates were given to the present proprietors as owners; if so, there would have been some principle of division, either equal shares, or the elder son would have got a large propor- tion. But the largest estate, that of Kotwára, belongs to the scion of a younger branch, and nany of the family have no landed possessions at all. AII over the pargana different members of the family had their residences, and it seems to bave been an understood thing among them that each should get as many villages as possible in his own neighbourhood under his control, and that the others should not interfere. So Fateh Khan's des- cendants settled in the north of the Haidarabad pargana at Gola and Kukra, and they acquired between 1821 and 1832 more than three quarters of their estates, all lying near Gola. Bahadur Khan's descendants all settled in the little pargana of Sikan- darabad (now included in Haidarabad), and they have no villages beyond its borders; they acquired the whole estate between 1821 and 1832, 23 did the descendants of Sangi Khan, the owners of Jalalpur, Bhúrwára, aud Kotwára; the two former in Aliganj and the latter in the south of Hai- darabad, but their villages also clustered round their residences. The reason of this restoration of the family was not that their just ancestral claims were recognized, but the establishment of the estates was due to the general disorder which ensued when Hakim Mebadi in 1820 lost the chakladarship, the lord lieutenancy in fact of Muhandi, Khairabad, and Babraich, and was succeeded by the Lucknow Kayath Param Dhan. This man did not reside in the district, he was not of the military profession, and he found it absolutely necessary to acquiesce in the occupation or usurpation by the resident gentry of any villages wbich suited thein. But the Abbans, although they seized upon these villages wholly, without title or right, when once a generation had passed in possession were eager to assert a proprietary tenure, and to divide the estate among the children after the strictest rules of ancestral property as is apparent from passages already quoted from Colonel Sleeman. As will appear further the Hindu branch of the family likewise divided the property according to ancestral shares among the entire fraternity in the eighteenth century; and since annexation the only large proprietor among the Hindus, the chief of Bánsi, has recognized the title of his uncles and cousins in a similar way. There is no doubt that the results have been unfortunate. The owners of Bhúrwára, Kukra, of Siáthu, of Bánsi, Saukhia Sansárpur, all mortgaged or sold, the greater part of their estates in the ten years preceding annexation, and for very inadequate sums--all of these transfers were effected under pressure, some under mere personal restraint, others as Siáthu only, when the owner had been subjected to violence and threatened with death, One great taluqdar, the Rája of Oel, swallowed up Bhúrwára, Chaurethia, Sikthu, another, Lone Singh of Mitauli , seized upon Kukra and Mailáni; another, the Thákur of Mahewa, obtained possession of Saukhia Sansárpur and Bánsi. Thus in ten years the Abban family lost sereuty-two villages, of which they have recovered less than one-half through redemption of the mortgages effected by widows and old men who were willing to sign