Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057345).pdf/459

 MAN 451 On the north-west of the pargana are the possessions of two Chau- hán families, Mahoti, Dhaurahra, Barai Kalán, and Rámnagar. Both families assert that they come from a place called Bhuinganj or Bhuin- pagar in Mainpuri, and they consider themselves of much purer and higher family than the Chauhans of the great southern family of this district of 565 villages. They marry their sons in the east among the Bais of Kot Saráwan, the Bais of the Chaurási of Salehpur Sarayyan near Shahganj, and also the Gautams of trans-Gogra. Their daughters they marry in the west to Panwárs, the Chamar Gaurs of Amethia, Súrajbans, and Raikwárs. The men of Dhaurahra give themselves much the most ancient lineage. Their ancestor, Nág Mal or Nág Chand, is said to have got the villages which his family now hold on his marriage with a Kalhans maiden, but I can find no other tradition of Kalhans' possessions in the pargana. Nág Mal settled at Dhaurahra, and on his death the vil- lages were divided among his grandsons, Dhaurahra falling to Mahma Sáh, Barai to Rám Dás, and Rámnagar to Naráin Dás. The acestor of the Maholi man again is said to have acquired his property here by marriage into the Gautam family of Mangalsi. His descendants have, besides Maholi, two neighbouring villages in the Bara Banki district, Firozpur and Misri. These Rajput tribes formed the chief proprietary of the pargana. Several isolated settlements were made by Muhammadans and others, but the Rajputs were so predominant that it will be sufficient to mention them in the notes I have to give on the villages of the pargana. The tribes retained their possessions, one as against the other, with singularly little change. On the west they are still independent proprietors. On the east 68 villages have been absorbed into the vast estate of Sir Mán Singh, and the clansmen have been reduced for the most part to the position of cultivators holding at a privileged rate. Notes on the villages of the pargang.-On the extreme west of the par- gana is Sihbár, a Muhammadan town, founded some 300 years ago by one Sih Alam, an immigrant from the western colonies of Nawabganj. He had two sons, Sayyad Alam and Sayyad Mahrúm, whose houses still stand, but in the decay which has befallen the fortunes of a family now too nu- merous to be comfortably supported by their slender property. The town is mean and dirty, standing on the miry slope that trends into the Gogra alluvium. To the south-west, however, is the interesting little village of Begamganj. It was founded by the Bahú Begam at the entrance to her fief domains. A bridge in excellent repair, built by Tikait Ráe (the famous Díwán, whose Tikaitnagar with its broad avenues and lofty walls is still the most striking town in the Bara Banki district), spans & pic- turesque stream, the boundary of the two districts. The queen-mother built in the hamlet a mosque and well, which are now overshadowed by a noble banyan tree; near it she laid out a garden, with light gateways at its main entrances. Withering shishamn trées still mark the ancient walls, but coarse arhar and rank weeds have usurped the place of marigolds and roses, and the summer-house in the middle has lost its roof, and the fruit- cellars are blackened by the fires of the field watchmen,