History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v2.c48.18

v2.c48.18

The difference between the statements recorded by Motte in 1766 and Impey in 1863 is very great. The State officials had become bold enough to claim that this supposed petty chief of Mainpuri had become of sufficient importance to intrigue with a princess of the Royal House of Delhi. There is a greater amount of difference with regard to the date of the migration of the ancestor of the family. Motte stated that the ancestor of the family came to Orissa a couple of centuries before his time (1766), say, in the middle of the sixteenth century. At this time Akbar was on the throne of Delhi. Will any respectable scholar admit today that Hitamber Sing, a petty Jaigirdar or military adventurer, intrigued with the daughter of the great Mughal Emperor? Grant quotes the names of 26 generations of the chiefs of Patna up to his time. Impey quoted 25 up to Vajra-Hiradhara Deva who died in 1762. Even if we take 20 years to be the average duration of the rule of a chief we cannot name Hitambar Sing, the reputed father of Ramai Deva, to be a contemporary of Akbar. It became clearly necessary now to furnish additional information to to State historiographers and compilers of Gazetteers in order to cover this defect. Let us turn to the next editions of the District Gazetteer. It should be sufficient at this stage to note that a suggestion of Motte made in 1766 and recorded and printed in 1799 was sufficient to put the State officials on their guard in 1863 and 1870; that Somer near Ajmer of their tradition may be Sambhal a great Rohilla stronghold. Therefore, in all subsequent “informations” supplied to British officials they stuck loyally to Sambhal and gave the go-by to the Sambhar of the artless "Chhamkaran" of 1766 who supplied facts as he knew them to Motte. In between Motte and Impey or Grant another Englishman gave a different turn to the ancestry of the chiefs of Patna-Sambalpur-Sonpur. Sir Richard Temple states in 1863, in his *Report on the Zemindaris and other petty Chieffaincies in the Central Provinces*—"The Sambalpur and the Patna Rajas are sometimes said to be descended from or related to the royal or independent Haihaibansi dynasty of Ratanpur, in the Chhattisgarh plateau, which was formerly the capital of Chhattisgarh."1 This rambling reference by the late editor of the Indian Antiquary only proves a wild craving on the part of these chiefs to secure another Rajput ancestry if the Chauhan claim failed.