adopted his nephew Mahtab Chand as his heir. The Kapur family was one of considerable antiquity and great distinction. The founder of the Burdwan branch was Abu Rai of Kotli in Lahore, by caste a Kapur Kshatriya, who settled in Bengal in the middle of the 17th century, being appointed 'Choudhuri and Kotowal of Rekabi Bazaar' under the Fauzdar of Chakla Burdwan. To the estate that he founded his descendants gradually added further possessions, generation after generation playing its part in building up the immense property which Mahtab Rai was finally to complete and consolidate in the nineteenth century. Chitra Sen Rai, eighth in descent from Abu Rai was the first to obtain the title of Raja, a distinction he received from the Emperor Mahomed Shah in 1740. His successor Tilak Chand attained the higher rank of Maharajadhiraj Bahadur, a title which each successive head of the Burdwan family has since held. This son, Tez Chand succeeded at the age of six in 1771 and obtained from the Emperor Shah Alum a sanad dated the same year confirming him in the rank of Maharajadhiraj Bahadur and appointing him commander of 5,000 cavalry and 30,000 infantry with various other military distinctions. For sixty-one years he lived to enjoy these honours, his long life extending from the momentous period of the dawn of British rule in Bengal down to the comparatively peaceful days of its firm establishment in the fourth
