History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v2.c37.28

v2.c37.28

The final conquest of Orissa by the Mughals under Mān Singh inaugurated a new era in the political history of the country by the establishment of a new dynasty of Hindu Kings in that country under the suzerainty of the Mughal emperors. Rāmāi Rāotrā or Rāmachandra Deva succeeded in persuading or bribing the Mughal general into nominating him as the Gajapati under peculiar circumstances. The origin of the new Hindu King is obscure. According to one account he was the son of Dānāi Vidyādhara, the minister of some of the kings of the Bhoi dynasty. He is said to have come from the south and seized the western part of the Puri district and fixed its capital at Khurda. His reign is calculated from 1568-69 or the year after the death of Mukunda Harichandana.¹ According to another account Rāmachandra was related to the Bhoi kings and for this reason he became the Superintendent of the temple² (parikshā). Stirling’s account, which is the earlier, states: “The Uria historians go on to relate that at the expiration of twenty-one years of anarchy and inter-regnum, the ministers and the principal men of the country beginning to recover from their depression and alarm, assembled together to consult about the affairs of the nation, and chose as their chief a person named Ranai (Rāmāi) Raotra, son of the before mentioned Danaye Bidyadhar, whom they raised to the rank and dignity of Maha Rajah of Orissa, A. D., 1580, under the title of Ramchander Deo. With him begins the third and titular race of Sovereigns called the Bhoi Vamsa, or Zemindari race.”³ So, what was represented to Sterling in 1825 as the election of a king by the people of Orissa after twenty-one years of anarchy, became in 1908 a direct succession to the throne for Rāmachandra Deva after the death of Mukunda Harichandana in 1568, in the hands of unscrupulous Oṛiyā compilers. The compiler of the gazetteer states in a special foot-note that "This account of the dynasty has been compiled from the palm-leaf chronicles, checked and supplemented by the information in Muham-madan and other histories."¹ The next sentence in Stirling's account casts the gloom of inconsistency over his narrative of the accession of Rāmchandra, because we are informed that this election was confirmed by "Sewai Jye Sinh, the general of the Emperor Akbar, who came into the province about the time, with his army, to look after the imperial interest." Neither the *Āin-i-Akbarī* nor the *Akbarnāmā* mention any Mughal general of that name, who came to Orissa during the reign of Akbar, nor do they mention any Jai Singh among the *Manṣabdārs* of Akbar's court. Jai Singh I, Mīrzā Rājah, was a general of Shāh Jahān I and Aurangzīb 'Alamgīr; Sawāī Jai Singh or Jai Singh II, the founder of the modern city of Jaipur, was a contemporary of the emperors Farrukhsiyar (1713-19) and Muḥammad Shāh (1719-48). Therefore, none of them could be the contemporary of Akbar. This irrelevancy makes the entire statement of Stirling about the election of Rāmāi Rāotrā, son of Dānāi Vidyādhara, as Gajapati Rāmachandra Deva of Orissa by the grandees of the country in 1580, entirely untrustworthy.