It is difficult to ascertain what was the precise status of the Bursenaputtee in the distracted reigns of Chunderkant and Poorunder Sing. It is said that the usual tribute was paid, but this is denied by the other party; we presume, therefore, that in these weak and divided times the Muttucks were nearly independent. When the Burmese invaded the country, the Bursenaputtee, at their requisition, afforded them supplies in labour and provisions, but no aid in troops or money; and they, therefore, made no attempt to seize his possessions. On the conquest of Assam by the British Government, the Bursenaputtee acknowledged its supremacy, and bound himself to obey its orders; he further engaged to supply three hundred soldiers in time of war, no tribute having been demanded of him. The interior management of his territory was left in his own hands, excepting as regarded cases of murder and other capital offences, which were to be made over for trial to the Agent of the Governor-General or Political Agent in Upper Assam. This arrangement had evidently in view the impressing a rude people with a greater regard for human life, which the more rigid investigation and sanctity of British forms of justice might be expected to create. This state of things subsisted until January 1835, when, under the instructions of the Agent to the Governor-General, the obligation to supply troops was commuted into an annual payment of 1800 rupees. No census has been taken of the population, but from the best information it is estimated at sixty thousand or seventy thousand persons. It yields a revenue of 20,000 rupees per annum. In his personal manners the late Bursenaputtee Malebur was plain and straightforward, and accustomed to think and act for himself. In his political character, his fidelity was much doubted a few years back, but he was always found ready to answer every call; as evinced in the expedition against the Duffa Guam in 1835, and the Singphoo Luttora chief in 1838, which proved that he was faithful to his engagement. But his communications with British officers were not always carried on in the smoothest manner. Accustomed to act as an independent chief for forty or fifty years, and his territory being unoccupied by troops, either Burmese or British, he was naturally independent and blunt in his manners; which bearing, combining with the testiness of age and dislike of innovation natural to that period of life, occasionally gave rise to improprieties of expression and seeming acts of disobedience. He departed this life in January 1839, leaving ten sons, five daughters, and three widows; and, pending the final orders of Government, Muttuck was placed under Bhageerut Majoo Gohain, the second son of the late chief: the Bor Gohain, or eldest son, having waved his claim of birth in compliance with the wishes of his father.