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67
status of local development, the Bandhalgotis freely admit that one of their number was enlisted on the side of the Raja of Hasalipur in his dispute
with the Baghels, and that in return for services then rendered, a tract of land was made over to him by the raja. Again while they describe their former home to have been at Narwargarh, the town of Hasanpur was, until the time of Hasan Khan, i. e., just until the mutiny point in the annals of the Bandhalgotis and Bachgotis, commonly known as Narwal. And further, whereas the Bandhalgotis derive their name from Bandhu, there is contiguous to Hasanpur a village named Bandhua and a slight eminence on the border of a tank between the two is still pointed out as the" site of the residence of the Bandhalgoti servant of the riija. The story of the misalliance may seem to find some support in one form of the clan appellation, for Banjhilgoti is a very possible corruption of Bansjhilgoti, and though the exact word Banjhil does not exist, a very similar one Bansphor shows that the bamboo-splitting industry furnishes the basis of a caste distinction.
The obverse of the picture, however, is not quite blank. To trace the source of the Bandhalgoti traditions, it is curious that in claiming alliance with the Jaipur family they should hit upon as the home of their ancestor the very place it occupied before its removal to Jaipur, and the strangeness of the coincidence is enhanced by the fact that Siida R£e's pilgrimage into Oudh agrees in date with the Kachhwaha migration-f-. The imputed veneration of the b^nka or bamboo knife is explained away trifling modification of the name of the instrument. By the elision
by a
a the knife of the bamboo-cutter is transformed into the poniard bdnk, of the warrior and herein, whether consciously or unconsciously they furnish what is perhaps an indication of western connection, for the poniard, the professed object of their reverence is the symbol of Narwar, * the very State from which Siida E,^ is represented to have come. With respect to the Hasanpur grant, they assert that Dharamir was the recipient, and that he was not the ancestor of the whole clan, but a younger brother of the then chief, and founder only of a collateral branch, viz., Even he, too, they say, was the ally and not the servant of Rdja Tikri. of the final
Hasan Khan. Respecting the alleged Pande paternity of the Bandhalgotis, it may be noted that Bhansiawan, by some pointed out as their first resting-place in Amethi, is still occupied by a Pande brotherhood, and in Udiawan, one of their very earliest acquisitions, tales are still extant of a P^nde proprietor. The Ain-i-Akbari, moreover, peoples pargana Garh Amethi with BahmanThis, howgotis, no doubt identical with those now called Bandhalgotis. ever, is the third inference it has been seen possible to draw from their chameleon-like mutations each of them in some measure neutralizes the Regarding the termination " goti " also, the following points are others. of notice. It is commonly said to signify the got or gotra worthy I think, to which a tribe belong. " Properly those only are gotes," says Sir H. Elliot " which bear the name of some Rishi progenitor, as Sandilya, Bh^raddwaj,
- See
+
list
Elliot's
Symbols given in the second volume of Prinsep's Antiquities. Supplementary Glossary, Amethiaa.
of
