or extort praise. Indeed, for five generations together the family did not produce any man of note until we come to Jadab Dutt. This remarkable character flourished in the time when Raja Ballal Sen was on the throne of Bengal. It is somewhat curious that this king ascended the throne in the very year in which William of Normandy having defeated and slain Harold took possession of the English throne. Jadab did not take service of any kind, and, surely, there was no necessity for it, as he was a man of substance and had considerable property. But though not a servant of the sovereign, he was one of his trusted friends and advisers, and his valuable counsel, was as a rule taken on all important affairs of state. When Ballal Sen proposed to make a classification[1] of nobility, he asked Jadab as to the propriety of the measure. The latter apprehending the abuse of kulinism in the distant future gave a decidedly adverse opinion. Every means was employed to bring him over to the side of the king, but all to no purpose. Jadab, strong-minded as he was stood firm as a rock and did not budge an inch from the views which he had already expressed on the subject. The king was certainly displeased but the sturdy Kayastha of the bold Utter-Rarhi sept had greater regard for the still small voice of the "inner seer" than the mandate of a powerful liege-lord. The result was that the family of Jadab was not included in the classification of Ballal but stood aloof in "stately solitude" as Virgil would have said. This fact is alone sufficient to show that Jadab who made light of the frowns of royalty must have been a man of considerable importance. Indeed, he belonged to the class of land holders who possessed a large share of influence in Bengal. They were, as it were, the barons of the land, and the king could not make or unmake them at his will and pleasure. They had a position which even the sovereign power could not ignore. They were almost above the law
- ↑ In this matter of great importance Ballal was followed by the famous Raja Hara Sinha Deva of Mithila, who flourished in the first half of the fourteenth century. Like him the Maithil king divided the Brahmins and Rajpoots into different classes, and this classification is still observed in the modern district of Tirhut. The dynasty of Sheo Sing, the patron of Vidyapati, "the morning star" of Bengali poetry, followed that of Hara Sinha Deva, and was succeeded in its turn by the Darbhanga House. See Sarbadhicari's Tagore Law Lectures p. 396.
