History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v2.c43.2

v2.c43.2

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