Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c47.s2.8

v4.c47.s2.8

By the year 1791, Bijay Singh had grown very old and was visibly breaking up, and it was necessary to declare his heir. The choice of the discontented barons was Bhim Singh (the son of the Rajah's fifth son), but his fierceness and proud spirit made him unfit to play a secondary part. The Pāsbāni found a tamer instrument in a younger grandson of the king, named Mān Singh,* the son of the sixth son of the Rajah. Her plan was to formally adopt Mān Singh as her son, and then make the king summon all the barons to do homage to him as their future sovereign, so that she might rule the State as his adoptive mother after Bijay Singh's death,—"exactly like what Ahalyā Bāi was doing in the Holkar State."