Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 2.djvu/122

 MAHARAJAH OF BENARES. (90)

HE Rajaliship, or, in Indian phraseology, the Raj, of Benares, was founded by Munsaram, the Zemindar of Gungapore. He was succeeded in 1740 by Bubaint Sing, and the latter, thirty years later, by the celebrated Cheyt Sing. These were all tributaries of the Nawab Vizier of Oude, who subsequently, in 1775, made over Benares, with other adjoining districts, to the East India Company. Cheyt Sing was permitted to remain in possession of his lands; but, aspiring to be independent of the British Government, rebelled, was defeated, and died in 1810 at Gwahor, where he had taken refuge with Scindia. (It will be recollected that the transactions which led to the rebellion of Cheyt Sing formed the first article of the charges in the famous impeachment of Warren Hastings, of which article he was acquitted by 13 against 6. See Mill's History of India, book v., chap. 7, and book a., chap. 2.) The rebellion of Cheyt Sing was held to have forfeited the claim of his direct descendants to succession, and a collateral branch of the family was placed on the guddee in the person of Mohiput Narain. In 1794 the management of the estate (with exception to a few patrimonial lands) was relinquished by the then Rajah to the British Government, who pay the profits, after deducting administrative expenses, to the Rajah for the time being. In 1828 the family domains also were taken under British management on the same terms, by a law specially enacted for the purpose, the preamble of which (Bengal Regulation, No. 7, of 1828) sets forth the insufficiency of the arrangement previously subsisting—the real fact being that the then Rajah had shown himself totally incapable of managing the considerable ancestral estates still in his hands.

The representatives of this family, who continue to reside at Benares, have lately shown themselves fully ahve to the advantages of European civilization; and have displayed much munificence in contributing from their large revenues to the schools and other institutions of the city. The present holder of the title and estates, Deo Narain Sing, has recently been invested by the Viceroy of India with the second class (K.C.S.I.) of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India, conferred on him by Her Majesty the Queen.