BAL was included even division of
217
as late as the Ain-i-Akbari In the vast
sub-montane
Rdmgarh
Gauri, which embraced in the two tappas of Tulsipur and Daman-i-koh the future raj of Tulsipur. In the seventh generation from the original invader, Madho Singh, Janwar, separated from his brother Ganesh Singh, the Ikauna Raja, and reduced a tribe of Barhis (carpenters), who held, under the leadership of one Khemu Barhi, the tappas of Ch^wal
Khata and Paydlpur between the Rapti and the Kuwana. His son, Balram Das, early in the reign of Jahangir, founded the present town of Balrampur, and re-named the pargana. This appears to have been here, as elewhere in Oudh, a period of active development of power with the Chhattri tribes and Balram Das, assisted by his cousin. Raja Lachhmi Narain Singh of Ikauna, reduced in succession the small chieftainships of Mathura and Itror to the north of the Rapti, which now form the western and eastern halves of the raj on that side of the xiver. Who the defeated lords were, there are now no means of ascertaining but tradition asserts that they were Janw^rs of the same family as their conquerors, and gives them, according to the conventional computation in
use here, each a chieftainship of seven hos in extent.
The Balrampur raj had at this time attained its greatest extension ; to the west the boundary between it and Ikauna passed, as it does now, nearly due north and south the ruins of Sahet Mahet to the north the Tulsipur pargana was a vast unnamed forest, whose scanty settlements of Kurmis had not yet been subjugated by the Chauhans of Naipal, and who, by admitting the zamindari of the Balrampur Raja, laid the foundation of a dispute, which was not settled till both parganas were again united under one chieftain after the mutiny. The eastern boundary was then, as it always has been since, contested with the Pathana of Utraula, but probably differed but little from the one now laid down while the forest tract between the Kuwana and the Bisuhi to the south had not been wrested from the Janwars by the superior power of the Bisens. The next war was in the latter half of the seventeenth century, when the Pathans of Utraul% under their able leader Pahar Khan, harried the country as far as Ikauna, This probably happened during the chieftainship of Pran Chandar, who was; the grandson of Balram Das, and contemporary with the weak reign of Raja Chhatars^l Singh of Ikauna. The next fifty years are not distinguished by any events of importance, and there is nothing worth recording till the development and consolidation of the great power of the Bisens made themselves felt by their northern neighbours. The Gonda raj was finally and definitely extended over the tract between the Bisuhi and the Kuwana, while a Bisen was put in possession of the old JanwSr lordship of Bhinga, The superior power of Raja Datt Singh, Bisen, seems to have prevented any serious resistance to his encroachments, and the southern and north-western boundaries of BaMmpur have not been altered since. The Janwar Rajas, Chhatar Singh and Narain Singh, resisted in two pitched battles, but without success, the first lieutenants of the dynasty who commenced with Sa^dat Khan, and set an example of resistance to the exactions of the Lucknow court which was followed by aU their descendants till annexation. In 1777 A. D., Raja Newal Singh ascended the gaddi of Balrampur, and Oftea is remembered as one of the most famous warriors of bis race,
