History of Orissa from the Earliest Times to the British Period v2.c48.25

v2.c48.25

of the District of Sambalpur, is no better, in comparison. We can detect even now that some sort of intrigue was being carried on between the petty Chiefs of Orissa for the establishment of their Rajput ancestry and one party got hold of the subordinate establishment of some British office and managed to introduce their version of the ancestry of their own Chiefs. Messrs. O'Malley and Cobden-Ramsay, totally oblivious of facts as recorded by Impey and Grant on their particular points, printed the "informations" supplied to them by the State officials through their Indian clerks. We find two of them mentioned by O'Malley in a footnote on p. 23 of the Gazetteer of the Sambalpur District, printed in 1909. "I am indebted to Babu Satyabadi Padhi and Babu Nand Kishore Bohidar of Sambalpur for assistance in preparing this account of the legendary history of Sambalpur."¹ It was the interest of the Sambalpur party to prove that Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar were at one time their dependencies and the editor of the Gazetteer quietly printed these names among the 18 dependencies of Sambalpur.² He did not consider it necessary to look into the authenticity of the claim of the Patna-Sonpur-Sambalpur group. Mr. Cobden-Ramsay proved himself to be far more adaptable to the needs of the Sonpur-Patna party. He admitted everything placed before him to be true and gave the stamp of truth to these statements by including them in the Gazetteer. His book gave the chiefs of Patna and Sonpur some right to claim that their ancestor came to Orissa 600 years ago, *i.e.*, in the beginning of the 14th century instead of the middle of the 16th.¹ There is no evidence of the existence of Patna as a separate State or of the migration of the ancestor of the present house in the 14th century.