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RISE OF INDEPENDENT HINDU STATES 173 pendent states, whose annals are for the most part un- written or unworthy of record. Petty rulers, like Ahmad Khan of Mewat, held the land to within a dozen miles of Delhi to the south; and Darya Khan, the Lodi, matched him in his government of Sambhal on the north. There were independent chiefs in the Doab and at Biana, Hindu rajas at Kampila and Patiala and other places which had formerly owned the sovereignty of Delhi. Out of the ruck of small principalities, Hindu and Moslem, some half-dozen great dynasties stand prominently forth in Bengal, Oudh, Malwa, Gujarat, and the Deccan. The governors of Bengal had long before attained independence and assumed the style and authority of kings; and since the days of Mohammad Taghlak there had been scarcely an attempt at interference from Delhi, beyond the futile and half-hearted campaigns of the pacific Firoz. Within its own borders, however, Bengal was often divided against itself. Rival kings ruled Eastern and Western Bengal from the two cities of Sonargaon (near Dhaka) and Satgaon (close to Hugli), until, after a long struggle, they were united to Lakh- nauti under Hyas Shah in 1352, and the provincial cap- ital was fixed at Panduah, to which Firoz gave his own name. Firozabad remained the capital of the whole province till 1446, when the seat of government was removed again to Lakhnauti, which now received the name of Gaur, and later the epithet of Jannatabad or " Paradise-town." Very little is recorded of the annals of the numerous rulers of Bengal who governed the