Note 48 — G

Gautam.—A sept of Râjputs who claim as their eponymous ancestor the Rishi Gautama. They are usually treated as one of the Chandrabans, but not in the thirty-six royal races. Their original home is Fatehpur, and they claim to have been originally Brâhmans, the descendants of the Rishi Gautama. By another account they are descended from the Rishi Siringi. The descendant in the sixth degree from Gautama is said to have married the daughter of Ajaypâl, the Gaharwâr Râja of Kanauj, and to have received as her dowry the whole extent of the country from Prayâg (Allahâbâd) to Hardwâr. From this event the sept ceased to be Brâhmans and became Râjputs; the issue of the marriage took the title of Râja of Argal, a village in the ravines of the River Rind, about thirty miles west of Fatehpur.48 Sir H. M. Elliot49 distrusts the story of their connection with Siringi Rishi or with the Gaharwârs, because it is, in the first place, impossible that Siringi Rishi could have been the contemporary of any Gaharwâr Râja; and in the second place, it is highly improbable that the Gaharwârs could have preceded the occupation of the Gautams. Nevertheless the story is devoutly believed by many Gautams. In Oudh50 they were certainly very early settlers. They claim to be an offshoot from the Argal Râj, but their traditions as to the cause and manner of their occupancy are too faint and varying for record. In the Eastern Districts of the Province51 there is both a Chhatri and a Bhuînhâr branch: the former ignore the latter, and say that they themselves came from Argal. The Bhuînhârs allege that they are all one stock of Sarwariya Brâhmans, the Chhatris having assumed their present caste only when the ancestor of the Râja of Azamgarh became a Muhammadan and rose into power. In the Ayîn-i-Akbari they are described as zamîndârs in Pargana Nizâmâbâd. The Cawnpur branch is said to have emigrated from Argal four and-a-half centuries ago, and to have expelled the Arakhs.