Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057352).pdf/253

 RAE 245 Mr. Benett's account of the district generally may now be reverted to. The qánúngos and qázis of Rae Bareli were naturally anxious to take a place in the taluqdari system, but their attempts were always foiled by their too powerful neighbours, and they were only able to acquire the small estates of Hardaspur and Binohra, Each family of Musalmans was vexed by its special enemy among the Hindus. Those of Bareli by the Káyaths, of Bhilwal by the Ametlias, and of Pahremau by the Kanbpurias. Up to annexation the first two were tolerably evenly matcherl, but the Pathans of Pahremau had long been overpowered. Subdued by Mohan Singh of Tiloi, they afterwards enjoyed a brief respite during the vigourous period of Mughal ascendancy, and were again utterly ruined by Tiloi and Simrauta on the revival of Hindu power. For thirty years they supplicated the courts for their ancestral villages, and were reinstated at the fortunate moment when the wicked ceased to bave the power of troubling. During the mutiny they were again burnt out, and that they now hold a small estate is to be ascribed only to the restoration of English Government. The Chaudhris of Khíron were more successful, and Raghunath Singh, the descendant of a Janwar soldier, who had settled there in Aurangzeb's reign, supplied by his money his want of family interest. He held his villages however on a very precarious tenure, and was constantly being ousted by one or another of the Bais competitors, nor is it likely that his possession would have been long maintained if annexation had not frozen the waves. Though not falling directly within the scope of this report, it may not be out of place to mention that the once illustrious rájas never succeeded in acquiring any large estates. In about 1750 A.D., a Mahratta force under a leader known on the spot as Bargi Ráo occupicd Mánikpur, and found ten months amply long enough to ruin the local chieftains, and impress a lasting memory of their sojourn. A Muhammadan family is not supported by that living organization which preserves the Hindu clan and its rája, and when it falls it rarely recovers itself. Thus the Gardezis retained little but their title and the ruins of their palaces, and when the game of taluqa-making cominenced were unable to take a hand. The Bisens and the Kanhpurias filled the void they had left, and absorbed into their estates the villages of their old parganas. The three prominent cha- racters just before annexation were Bábu Rám Bakhsh, Rána Raghunath Singh, and Rána Beni Mádho Bakhsh, the two former supported by great wealth and the prestige of an illustrious pedigree; the latter celebrated for his undaunted bravery and extraordinary bodily vigour. Hitherto it has been my endeavour to state clearly the bare facts through which the present social order has been developed, but my report would be incomplete, if not unintelligible, without a short commentary describing the stages and manner of the developraent. This divides itself naturally into three periods, the first extending from the invasion of Shaháb-ud-dín Ghori to the downfall of Jaunpur, the second beginning with the kingdom