Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057345).pdf/274

 266 KHE under one head. Both apparently were held by the Goverument which made its own arrangement with the cultivators. Several matters of interest may be noted in connexion with the fore- going. It is alleged that the Jángre, Jodh Singh, was invited by the copyholders and tenants to assume the government, because they found the Bisen chiefs tyrannical and exacting. Again, it appears that the rája's authority over the Pargana did not cease when Government assumed the direct management. After Jodh Singh's death his widow, an able woman, a native of Sitapur, was granted three or four villages rent-free as a propi- sion. Bairisál Singh and his son Qalandar Singh, the Bisen rajas, had in vain attempted to recover the estate. Rám Náth Singh, the son of the last Bisen, made a third attempt thinking that there would be no one to resist him, but the ráni collected her forces, met the invader at Nawapur, her- self marshalling her troops on the field, and defeated this last effort made by the Bisens. She gradually recovered a large portion of the pargana, and died in 1833, having acquired also part of Dharmánpur in Bahraich. In 1848 ber successor, Arjun Singh, got the entire pargana, and the estate was forfeited after the mutiny.* The Bbúr estate, which was re-con- stituted after the death of Rája Jodh Singh was nominally subject to the head of the Dhaurabra family; its owners paying them as suzerains an annual bhent or subsidy, about six shillings for each village. The Jángre family has for centuries been noted for the incapacity of its pales. Rája Jodň Singh was not a Jángre; he was adopted by the pre- vious owner who was childless from a Sombansi family in the village of Manda in Firozabad pargana. We have seen that it was his ráni, also not of Jángre blood, who restored the fallen fortunes of the family, and similarly it was the ráni of Ganga Singh who consolidated the Bhúr estate, The present lords of the soil are the four heirs of Ráj Ganga Singh, whose widow, aided by her brother, stoutly contested the re-establishinent of British authority after the mutinies. The Pahori Súrajbans of Khairigarh.- One family still mains to be noticed, the Pahári Surajbans of Khairigarh, which, up to the year 1830 A.D., possessed not a village in British India, and are now the owners of the whole pargana of Khairigarh with the exception of the Government forests. This clan had been driven from their ancient seat in the hills by the Gurkhas about the end of the last century, and after wandering about subsisting on the charity of their fellow Chhattris, or fighting ander the British Government, settled at Basantpar in Bhúr, and at Kalbaria in Khairigarh, which villages had been given them for maintenance, In 1830 they attacked the Banjáras who at that time owned Khairi- garh, and drove them out. These laid their complaint before the Ondh Government. A force was despatched ander the command of the chakladar, and they were for a few years reinstated. Disease, however, broke out among the troops, the chakladar and nearly the entire force perished, and
 * See Dhaurabra.