Note 31 — KĀYASTH

Further, the Dakshina Rārhi Kāyasths affect the greatest veneration for the Brāhmans and profess to believe in the legend that traces their descent from the five menial servants who accompanied the five Brāhmans invited by king Adisur. The Uttara Rārhi Kāyasths or those of northern Burdwān, on the other hand, do not profess the same veneration for Brāhmans as the southerners, and deny the authenticity of the legend. It was this class which held some of the highest offices under the Muhammadan rulers of Bengal, and several leading zamīndārs or landholders at present belong to it.31 It was probably in this capacity of village accountant that the Kāyasth incurred the traditional hostility of one or two of the lower castes which still subsists in legend.32 The influence which the patwāri possesses at present, even under the most vigorous and careful supervision and with the liability to severe punishment for any abuse of his position, is a sufficient indication of what his power must have been when supervision and control were almost nominal. On this point Sir Henry Maine remarks in his description of the village community: “There is always a village accountant, an important personage among an unlettered population; so important indeed, and so conspicuous that, according to the reports current in India, the earliest English functionaries engaged in settlements of land were occasionally led, by their assumption that there must be a single proprietor somewhere, to mistake the accountant for the owner of the village, and to record him as such in the official register.33 In Bihār Sir H. Risley shows that Kāyasths have obtained proprietary right in a large area.