History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v2.c43: Appendix IV. The Maratha Conquest of the Sambalpur Tract

History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v2.c43

Language: English

Appendix IV. The Maratha Conquest of the Sambalpur Tract

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During the last twenty years persistent attempts have been made by one scholar to make people believe that the petty chiefs of Sonpur and Patna were really great and independent at one time. Save and except the family records of the so-called Chauhān Rajput chiefs of Patna, Sonpur, etc., on the borders of Orissa and Chhattisgarh no reliable records have yet been discovered which would prove that these pseudo-Chauhāns were ever independent. Maratha records assert that when Chhattisgarh was conquered by Raghuji Bhonsle I, all subordinate chiefs were feudatories of the Haihayas of Raipur and Ratanpur. It has moreover been asserted that Chhattisgarh was never conquered by the Mughals. As a proof that Chhattisgarh was thoroughly conquered by the Mughals I can cite the evidence of a silver coin of the Emperor Muhay-ud-din Aurangzeb' Alamgir exhibited at the annual meeting (1929) of the Numismatic Society of India struck from the mint of Bhonda, which proves definitely that Chhattisgarh had been definitely conquered by the Mughals during the reign of Aurangzeb. This coin was exhibited at Benares by Mr. T. Shrinivas of the Archaeological Department, who informs me that he can neither publish this coin himself nor permit me to do so unless and until something has been written on it in the official Archaeological publication of the Nizam's Government. He has given me to understand that his official superiors have discovered some proofs about the identification of this place. Bhonda is a well-known zamindari in Chhattisgarh and lies to the north-west of the Kawardha State with its headquarters in a village of the same name.¹ This contemporary evidence of the conquest of Chhattisgarh by the Mughals, by the establishment of a mint, not in the degenerate day of the impotent Aḥmad Shāh or Shāh 'Alam II, but under the mighty Aurangzeb settle the question. Again, the authors of a class of propaganda literature are now trying to prove that the Marathas, from the time of Raghuji I to that of Raghuji II, never succeeded in conquering that part of Chhattisgarh which is adjacent to Sonpur and Patna. Such is the nature of a brochure written by Mr. B. C. Mazumdar, formerly a Vakil of the Calcutta High Court, practising at Sambalpur and at present a lecturer of Calcutta University. This gentleman states that "The Mahraṭṭas, who about this time became very powerful in the highlands of Central India, extended their range of influence over the districts of Balasore, Cuttack and Puri and threatened the independence of Sonpur as well as of Patna and Sambalpur. When the Mahraṭṭa Chief of Nagpur became successful in capturing Raja Pṛthvī Singh Deo, he demanded that the State of Sonpur should agree to pay a certain amount into the Mahraṭṭa treasury to own the Mahraṭṭa supremacy. How it was that Raghuji Bhonsla could capture the Raja of Sonpur is not now easy to ascertain. The story goes that Raja Pṛthvī Singh Deo, who was a generous-hearted religious man, allowed the Mahraṭṭa soldiers to enter into his State unopposed, when the wily leader of the soldiers sent a messenger to the Raja asking for his hospitality.¹” So we are to believe that the pseudo-Chauhan Chief permitted Maratha soldiers to enter his little State as a measure of charity! The number of portraits of the present and past chiefs of Sonpur which adorn this brochure alone suffice to prove that it was written for advertising the present Chief of that State and glorifying his ancestors. Fourteen years later this brochure was followed by another written in the garb of a scholarly work by the same author. The number of misleading and incorrect informations supplied for public use in the second brochure is larger than in the previous one. We are told that “Again this significance of this tract can never be ignored that the Mahomedans, who became all powerful in the sea-board districts of Orissa, never thought of advancing to the borders of the Sambalpur tract over which the Chauhan rule prevail.”²

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¹ Chhattisgarh Feudatory States Gazetteer. (Bombay Times Press,) 1909, p. 323.

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¹ B. C. Mozumdar: Sonpur in the Sambalpur Tract, Calcutta, 1911, p. 57.

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² Orissa in the Making, University of Calcutta, 1925, p. 229.

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It would not have been necessary for me to burden the pages of this work with this appendix had not this class of literature been glorified by the very respectable name of Sir Edward Gait, M.A., K.C.S.I., I.C.S. (retired), formerly Lieutenant-Governor of Bihar and Orissa and one of the very few members of the Indian Civil Service who, like C. U. Wills and William Irvine, still command respect in the Republic of Letters. It was not possible for Sir Edward Gait to judge of the amount of false and misleading information packed by its author in this book. Otherwise I am sure he would not have permitted his name to be associated with it. It has become necessary, therefore, for me to prove that the majority of statements made by Mr. B. C. Mazumdar with regard to the pseudo-Chauhāns of Sonpur and Patna are incorrect by quotations from earlier European writers. The first direct falsehood in the statement that "It goes without saying that the Chohan Rajas maintained their thorough independence from the time of their acquisition of the States to 1745 when the Marhattas of Nagpur subverted the Haihaya kingdom of Bilaspur and Raipur. How matters stood in Maratha times from 1745 to 1803 remains to be considered."¹ Let us consider how this point can be judged from contemporary documents. Major P. Vans Agnew submitted a report on the Ṣūbah or Province of Chhattisgarh in 1820. We learn from this report that the Haihaya Rājā of Ratanpur, who died in 1596 A. D., became tributary to the Emperor of Delhi. His successor Raghunāth Singh was deposed by the Marathas in 1745.² The Maratha commander, Bhāskar Rām Kolhaṭkar, took Ratanpur by storm. After the murder of Bhāskar Rām, Raghunāth Singh rebelled and drove out Kalyān Gīr, the representative of the Maratha Power. In 1745 Raghujī returned as the head of the avenging army and deposed Raghunāth Singh, for whose support five villages were given. Mohan Singh was left in charge of Chhattisgarh and was successful in extending Maratha authority over the whole of Chhattisgarh and "in exacting tribute from Sumbulpore and other surrounding Zemindaries."³ Maratha authorities, especially Bākhars, pay very little attention to petty chieftains like the pseudo-Chauhān Rājās of Sambalpur, Sonpur and Patna. The Bākhar of the Nagpur Bhonsles by Kāśī Rāo Rājeśvar Gupte mentions Chhattisgaḍh in many places but no mention is to be found of the pseudo-Chauhāns. On page 41 it is stated that in Faslī 1153 Raghunāth Singh was replaced on the throne of Ratanpur but Kalyān Gīr was placed in charge as the Maratha Agent. In Faslī San 1160 Mudhoji was sent to Chhattiagḍh for settlement where he remained for a year.¹

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¹ Ibid., p. 236.

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² Reprinted at Nagpur, 1915, p. 2.

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³ Ibid., p. 3.

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¹ Nagpurkar Bhonslyā Bakhar, with notes by V, D. Oke, Poona, 1885, p. 48.

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The appointment of Mohan Singh is also mentioned later on.² The learned Vakil of the Calcutta High Court, now Professor of the Calcutta University, never thought that Maratha records and even early nineteenth century printed books in English would be brought forward to refute his inexactitudes, because such statements have been accepted by careless compilers of Gazetteers and ignorant district officers in Orissa and the Central Provinces, as historical facts. Agnew's statement proves that Sambalpur as well as all of its pseudo-Chauhāns subordinates were subjugated by the Marathas. We have seen in Chapter XXVII that there were Maratha Agents posted at Sambalpur for a long time, such as, Rāgmānji or Ragunāthji Jāchak, Lakshmanji Jāchak, etc. We know from the original Bākhar of the Nagpurkar Bhonsles that Jāchak was a family name of a host of officers of Raghuji I and his successors.

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² Ibid., p. 61.

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The next falsehood in Mr. B. C. Mazumdar's book is the following sentence: "Mr. Wills has proved that far from holding the Rulers of the Sambalpur Tract under subjection, the Rulers of Raipur and Bilaspur did never even realise or demand any revenue from the chiefs of the Chhattisgarh area who were counted as subordinate chiefs of the Haihayas."¹ I shall quote Major Agnew once more to prove that, though Mr. Wills is perfectly right, Mr. B. C. Mazumdar, with his usual legal acumen, has misstated the facts of the Haihaya-vamśī land-tenure in his attempts to prove that his client and his ancestors were independent chiefs under the Haihayas and the Marathas:

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¹ *Orissa in the Making*, p 236.

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"A General Account of the Systems which have prevailed at different times.—Under the Haihaya-vansi Rajahs the Feudal principles of their rule precluded anything in the nature of a System of Revenue. The Rajahs and the members of his family retained no more lands under their own management than were necessary for their comfort and dignity, the rest were assigned to their chiefs, who on their requisition, supplied them with whatever they required, with money according to their wants, and in war with quotas of troops proportioned to the lands they held. These Petty Lords seem, on their part, to have followed the same system, retaining but small tracts of land in their own hands and distributing the remainder amongst their servants who were at the same time soldiers and cultivators. The judicial authority in important cases they personally exercised; but in all inferior and common occasions they left the chief executive authority in revenue as well as other matters to the head of each Talook or

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Rekha Temple at Khajuraho

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village, who, it may be concluded, did not act upon any general or uniform plan.

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"The conquest of the country by the Mahrattas changed this state of things and gradually led to the introduction of their Revenue System in all those parts of the Province which were sufficiently productive to repay the trouble of the change.

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"During the time of Rajah Ragojee 1st little was done towards establishing any regularity, although Mohun Singh, who was left in charge of the Province by him, was very active and successful in subduing many Zamindars and either making their Lands Kalsa, or subjecting them to Tribute.

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"After Bimbajee's arrival in Sumbut 1815 (A. D. 1758), the first attempts were made to establish order; but it was not until the time of Veetul Dinkur, who filled the office of Soobadar in Sumbut 1847 (A. D, 1790) that any regular Revenue System was introduced; and that then adopted has continued, with but few changes, until the Superintendence of the affairs of the District fell into our hand."[1]

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The public will now be able to understand better for what reasons no revenue was demanded of the pseudo-Chauhan chiefs by the Haihaya kings. The next statement which calls for attention is: "When the Marathas came into power in Chhattisgarh in 1745 they did not direct their attention to this Sambalpur Tract, as that tract, which afforded them easy passage to Orissa and beyond, was not a strategic point with them. To subvert, or rather uproot, the Moslem Rule was what the Marathas aimed at, and as such Orissa Proper lying between two areas of Moslem influence, namely, the Northern Sircars and Bengal was a strategic situation and that situation the Marathas secured in the course of five years from 1745 to 1750 A. D.¹ Agnew's report of 1820 proves definitely that the Marathas ground Hindus and Musalmans alike in the same mill. The treatment of Raghunāth Singh of Ratanpur was the same as that of the Musalman Gond Raja of Deogadh-Chanda. The Haihaya suffered to the same extent as the pseudo-Chauhan.

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¹ Report on the Subah or Province of Chhattisgarh written in 1820, Nagpur, 1925, p. 10.

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¹ Orissa in the Making, p. 237.

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Perhaps Mr. B. C. Mazumdar thinks that a false statement gains ground by repetition. Therefore, on the next page we find the statement that: "That the principalities of the Sambalpur Tract remained thoroughly independent during this time is proved by the fact that the Marathas after becoming masters of Eastern Orissa had to ask the Ruler of the principalities of the Sambalpur Tract to acknowledge the overlordship of the Bhonslas of Nagpur almost towards the end of the 18th century."² We are not aware of any petition submitted by Raghujī Bhonsle I or any of his successors to the great would-be Mahārājās of Sambalpur or Sonpur applying for their pleasure to become the subordinates of the Bhonsles. Agnew, who was a soldier and not a lawyer, states definitely that Mohan Singh exacted a tribute from Sambalpur and the surrounding Zamindaris and his language implies the fact that the pseudo-Chauhans received the same blunt and ruthless treatment as the Nizām-ul-mulk of Haidarābād Deccan. Mr. B. C. Mazumdar naively admits that the petty chief Prithvi Singh Deo was kept a close prisoner at Nagpur by the Bhonsles for seventeen long years and after the death of his son he had to be ransomed.² Throughout the succeeding pages two facts are constanly dinned into our ears : That the pseudo-Chauhan chiefs never paid tributes to the Marathas and were independent throughout up to the British conquest and that their rank is much higher than that of all other Garhjāt chiefs of Orissa. It has been proved that all pseudo-Chauhan chiefs, whether of Sambalpur, Sonpur or of Patna, had to pay tribute to the Marathas though it might have become necessary to enforce its payment, at times as in Orissa Proper. It is also certain that the status of all Garhjāt chiefs of Orissa was higher than that of all chiefs of the Chhattisgarh Garhjāt. This can be proved from the fact that at the first engagement with the British Government the settlement with Sonpur was for five years only and therefore his status was that of an Oudh Tāluqdār after the deposition of Wājid Ali Shāh of Lucknow. But Mayurbhañj, though ceded to the same power by Raghujī Bhonsle II in 1803, pays the same tribute to the British Government as it did in 1804 and that is one-sixth of what it paid to Raghuji II. Sonpur and Patna remained included in the Central Provinces till 1905 and therefore they obtained better treatment from the Government of the most backward province in India, while the Orissa Garhjāt chiefs suffered a continual diminution of their ancient powers and privileges on account of their inclusion in Bengal, then the Metropolitan province of the British Empire in India. It is needless for me to pursue further the legal chicaneries of this learned legal representative of the Sonpur family beyond stating the fact that the Chhattisgarh Garhjāt chiefs were never independent, were thoroughly subjugated by the Marathas before 1755 and were regarded as Zamindars, not even as feudatories, by the Bhonsles of Nagpur till 1818. Motte distinctly states in 1766 that Sonpur was dependent on Jānoji.¹ I understand that the History of the Bhonsles of Nagpur is being compiled and written according to the modern critical method by certain Deccani gentlemen of the Central Provinces and it will be very soon possible for Mr. B. C. Mazumdar to learn how the ancestor of his client, Prithvi Singh Deo, was really treated by his so-called friend, Raghujī Bhonsle I. during his imprisonment for seventeen years at Nagpur and how much *revenue* not *tribute* was paid to the Bhonsles by them up to 1818.

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² Ibid., p. 238.

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² *Ibid.*, p. 239.

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¹ *Asiatic Annual Register*, 1799, p. 222

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I have had occasion, four years ago, to point out how far Mr. B. C. Mazumdar is capable of camouflaging facts and of misrepresenting truth. Here I must warn readers against believing propagandist literature either on behalf of the chief of Mayurbhanj or that of Sonpur. Propaganda in Indian States is a dangerous shoal for the general public and for the students of Indian History. I must quote one particular example in which a decent person (Mr. L. S. S. O'Malley, *l. c. s. Retd.*) was misled into making a totally false and misleading statement. While compiling the Gazetteer of the Orissa Feudatory States Mr. O'Malley was persuaded by two Oriya gentlemen named Babu Satyabadi Padhi and Babu Nand Kishore Bohidar of Sambalpur to state that eighteen States were feudatories to the Chiefs of Patna or Sambalpur. But Major H. B. Impey, Deputy Commissioner of Sambalpur, writing in 1863, mentions eighteen other states as forming the Athara-gaḍh :—

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¹ Reprint of Report on the Zamindarees and other Chieffaincies in the Central Provinces in 1863 by Sir Richard Temple, K. C. I. E., Nagpur, 1923. p. 9.

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² Bengal District Gazetteer, Sambalpur, p. 22.

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Mr. B. C. Mazumdar quotes O'Malley with great glee because "Information received through the office" by that unsuspecting gentleman had enabled Mr. Mazumdar to prove that the Bhañjas of Mayurbhañja and Keuñjhar were at one time feudatories of his Chauhan Emperors and he quietly omitted to state that the list printed in Sir Richard Temple's "Report on the Zemindarees of the Central Provinces of 1863" does not contain the names of Mayurbhanja, Keunjhar, Panchgadh, Athgadh and in their places are mentioned Athmalik, Chandrnpur and Bargadh. The Atharagadh of Impey consists of 17 Garhjat states plus Sambalpur.

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Such are the methods employed by Mr. B. C. Mazumdar in his reconstruction of the History of Orissa.