The tribes and castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, Volume 1 (of 4)Crooke, William
History
The tribes and castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, Volume 1 (of 4)
Crooke, William
Caste -- India -- History; Hindus -- India; Tribes -- India -- History
=============+=======
District. |Number.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~
Agra | 5
Farrukhâbâd | 27
Mainpuri | 62
Etâwah | 8
Etah | 293
Shâhjahânpur | 201
Cawnpur | 2
Fatehpur | 10
Allahâbâd | 223
Jâlaun | 1,188
Benares | 29
Gorakhpur | 19
Azamgarh | 174
Lucknow | 255
Unâo | 113
Râê Bareli | 56
Sîtapur | 454
Kheri | 49
Bahrâich | 93
Sultânpur | 201
Partâbgarh | 78
Bârabanki | 890
+~~~~~~~
Total | 4,430
=============+=======
B
Bachgoti.—A sept of Râjputs. Their story is thus told:—“After the
defeat of Prithivi Râj by Shahâbuddîn Ghori, some Chauhâns, under
Baryâr Sinh and Kâns Râê, descendants of Chahir Deo, brother of
Prithivi Râj, fled from Sambhalgarh, and wandering eastward, about 1248
A.D., settled at Jamwâwan, in the Sultânpur District. Even here,
however, they felt themselves unsafe while they continued to bear the
name of their proscribed race, so they deemed it prudent to adopt
another, to which they were equally entitled, and which they might own
with equal pride. If they belonged to the stock of their four-handed
predecessor, they also belonged to the gotra of their creative saint.
They accordingly adopted the device of concealing their lineal beneath
their spiritual descent.” There has been some dispute as to whether
they took their new name from Vatsa, who was the author of one of the
hymns of the Rig Veda, and who was perhaps the same as the sage Vatsa,
who, according to Manu, [169] “when attacked, as the son of a servile
mother, by the fire which pervades the world, burned not a hair by
reason of his perfect veracity,” or from the more celebrated Vasistha,
who is the centre of a large cycle of Vedic and post-Vedic legend. The
first theory is, however, the more probable of the two. A second
version of this story is that Râna Sangat Deo, great-grandson of Chahir
Deo, had twenty-one sons. Of these the youngest succeeded his father,
when he married a bride of the Tomar sept, and of the house of Jila
Patan. The other sons sought their fortunes in other parts. Baryâr Sinh
and Kâns Râê went to Mainpuri, and there joined the army of Ala-ud-dîn
Ghori then starting from that place on an expedition against the Bhars,
and thus found their way into Oudh. Both these accounts concur in
attributing the advent of the Bachgotis into Oudh to Muhammadan
influence; but the one declares that they were driven before the
invaders, and the other that they were led by them. It is in favour of
the first that it leaves a space of fifty-five years between Prithivi
Râja and Baryâr Sinh, and thus accords with the common belief that the
latter was a descendant of a brother of the former; it also affords a
possible explanation of the assumption of the name Bachgoti.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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