AME
64
it consisted not of 84, but 10 ordinary villages, for the support of a raja's brother remained to be rectified by several subsequent accessions. The story of Arjun Singh's death has been already told in connection with Kannu Kasrawan he left to his son Madho Singh the very respectable inheritance of 101 villages, acquired during a short period of 27 years. In 1842 Raja Madho Singh also succeeded his cousin Bisheshwar Singh in Amethi and his two estates becoming thus blended together, the separate existence of Gangoli terminated.
Occupying almost the centre of the Amethi pargana lies a cluster of villages, the principal of which is Bihta. The ex-proprietary residents style themselves Bandhalgotis, and '^Bihte!*^*'^"^"^ their claim to do so, in the present day at least, is generally admitted, but otherwise they are thorough Ishmaelites, debarred all They are indeed of all social intercourse with the remainder of the clan. the Bandhalgotis the only ones who cannot point to the name of their ancestor in the general pedigree. As to their location in their present seats, they talk vaguely of a grant of land they received from the Emperor Akbar, or with more precision admit that they know nothing whatever about it. The Bandhalgotis say they represent a very old stratum of society more ancient even than the Bhars, an acme of antiquity which their namesakes leave unchallenged. tappa to which Bihta gives its name is unanimously represented to be one of the oldest possessions of the raja's family, and yet the residents claim to have held it in the yet more remote past. From all these facts it would appear that with the single exception perhaps of the Bais of Udi^wan, the Bandhalgotis of Bihta are the oldest proprietary body in the pargana. This goes a very little way, however, towards explaining who they are. In the absence of all certain information it is permissible to supplement with argument the few facts we are acquainted with concerning them. In the first place they share with Sut Sah's descendants the name of Bandhalgoti, and yet are altogether unconnected with them. The inference is that either the former or the latter are misnamed, and that it is the former rather than the latter it is easy to understand why after their subjection they should endeavour to pass themselves off as kinsmen and equals of their conquerors, who on their side had little inducement to identify themselves with their defeated But if they be thus deprived of the name they now bear, it becomes foes. necessary to furnish them with another, not a very simple task perhaps, and yet not altogether a hopeless one. It is, under any circumstances, a reasonable presumption that their chief village was founded by them, and that it received their tribal denomination if the antiquity of their proprietorship be not ever-estimated, it is further probable that it was the centre from which cultivation radiated, and that it gave its name to a larger tract, as the process of reclamation went on until it extended to the entire pargana conversely then, some clue to the now lost name of the tribe should be found in that of the pargana and their chief village.
A
In their present state, Bihta and Amethi certainly bear little resemblance to each oth,er, but this does not show there has always been the same dissimilarity. In the first place, it is an almost invariable rule that a pargana is called after a village, and it should therefore be possible to find
