Note 29 — B

Bais.—(Sans. Vaishya, “one who occupies the soil”.)—A very important and influential sept of Râjputs, widely distributed all over the Province. Their legend is thus given by Sir C. Elliott29:—“The Bais assert themselves to be descended from Sâlivâhana, the mythic son of a snake who conquered the great Râja Vikramaditya, of Ujjain, and fixed his own era in A.D. 55. About 1250 A.D. the Gautam Râja of Argal refused to pay tribute to the Lodi King of Delhi, and defeated the Governor of Oudh, who sent a force against him. Soon after this defeat, the Râni, without his knowledge and without fitting escort, went secretly to bathe, at Baghsar, in the Ganges, on the festival of the new moon. Baghsar is close to Dundiya Khera. Sir H. M. Elliot places the locale of this story at Allahâbâd; but the other is the tradition current in Baiswâra, and seems more probable, because Baghsar is closer to Argal, and is the nearest bathing place she could have gone to, and, secondly, Allahâbâd being a much-frequented place of pilgrimage, she would hardly have gone there in any case without an escort, particularly as it was the head-quarters of the Muhammadan Governor. The Governor of Oudh heard of her arrival and sent men to capture her. Her escorts were dispersed, and she was on the point of being made prisoner, when she lifted the covering of her litter and cried,—“Is there no Chhatri who will rescue me from the barbarian, and save my honour?” Abhay Chand and Nirbhay Chand, two Bais Râjputs, from Mungipatan, heard her, and came to her rescue, beat off her assailants, and guarded her litter till she arrived safely at her home in Argal, in the Fatehpur District. Nirbhay Chand died of his wounds, but Abhay Chand recovered, and the Râja, in gratitude for his gallant rescue, gave him his daughter in marriage, and with her as dowry all the lands on the north of the Ganges, over which the Gautam bore rule. He also conferred on his son-in-law the title of Râo, which is still the highest dignity among the Bais. Abhay Chand fixed his home in Dundiya Khera, and the title and estates descended, in an unbroken line, to Tilok Chand, the great eponymous hero of the clan, who are called after him Tilok Chandi Bais, in contradistinction to other branches of the same tribe. He lived about 1,400 A.D., and extended the Bais dominion over all the surrounding country, and it is from his victories that the limits of Baiswâra became definitively fixed. The tract is universally said to include twenty-two Parganas, and though there is considerable discrepancy in the various lists of these Parganas, which are furnished from different quarters, the following list is probably correct:—