Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057345).pdf/455

 MAN bed 41 SP PRO Red .. jeg 67 madzas. 37 93 S 39 .. ... Marshes are common, tanks abundant, and in the wells water is nowhere far from the surface, The pargana, as it stands, has received considerable accessions from the parganas of Pachhimráth and Rudauli, district Bara Banki. It now con- sists of 126 villages, with an area of 125 square miles, and a population of 98,452 ; being at the rate of 813 to the square mile. Varieties of the tenure are as follows: Taluqdari Mufrad Rent-free The revenue demand of the pargana amounts to Rs. 1,00,471. Its remoter history is difficult to trace. But the advance into its present state of fine cultivation seems to have been comparatively recent. Even a century ago, so it appears, the middle of it, the most fertile portion, was a lakh pera—a forest. It is said that Mangalsi takes its name from Mangal Sen, a Gautam Chieftain, whose clan had extensive possessions on this side of the Gogra. The Gautams have long been driven across the river, but they have recently put in a suit for a plot of alluvial land below the village of Mangalsi , as the site of a former village of theirs. The Gautams of Trans-Gogra, whom I bave seen, have the very dimmest traditions about Mangal Sen, though they claim him as their ancestor, and they have disappointed me by unfulfilled promises of an enquiry from the pandits regarding the ancient history of their property. It is not a little remarkable, bowever, that the great Bais families, who bold or held all the lands round Mangalsi, and whose tradition concerning themselves is of an immigration from the west two or three centuries ago, do not represent that they conquered the Gautams. It was Bhars, whom, according to the village stories, they found owners of the country. The subjugation of Gautam Rajputs would have been a more honourable feat than the expulsion of Bhars, and the name would surely have been retained in the family chronicles. It is true the Chauhans of Maholi, who are said to have arrived in the pargana about the same time as the Bais, allege they obtained their village in dowry on the marriage of their chief to a Gautam maiden of Mangalsi. But on the other hand the Shekhs, who now hold Mangalsi, have a story that Man- gal Sen was only a Bhar who had a fort close by. These Shekhs are the men of the oldest family in the pargana, and they can verify traditions of a greater age than 300 years. They showed me a remarkable deed, and in the Naskh character, dated 760 Hijri (1359 A.D.), bearing the seal of Firoz Tughlaq, and appointing Muhammad Ahmad Khatib in Mangalsi. They showed me another with the same seal of 761. H. conferring the office of qázi on Imám Fakhr-ud-din. I was shown another of 989 H. (1581 A.D.) granting Shekh Yusuf“ 100 bíghas of land in pargana Man- galsi , Sarkár Oudh," bearing the seal of the great Akbar, and they have three farmáns of Shah Jahán of the years 1043-1050 H. giving revenue- free grants to members of the Shekh family. These are followed up by deeds under the seal of the Nawab of Oudh, and as they were not produced for the purpose of any litigation, I have every faith in their authenticity.