Page:Vizagapatam.djvu/269

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GAZETTEEE.

The Golgonda chieftains afterwards became tributary to the Rájas of Vizianagram, but when the English were established at Vizagapatam they required the Rájas to resign this supremacy. In 1776, however, Bhairava Bhúpati sheltered two refractory subjects of the Company (the zamindars of Parlákimedi and Mádgole) and he was again subordinated to the Púsapátis, who raised his tribute from Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 23,000 and also made him keep up a large body of paiks. After the death of Viziaráma Rázu at the battle of Padmanábham in 1794, the Golgonda zamindar paid the Company a peshkash of Rs. 10,000 and this was the figure entered in his sanad at the permanent settlement in 1802. In 1836 the incapacity of the then zamindar, Ananta Bhúpati, brought the estate to the verge of ruin; and he was persuaded by the district officers to resign in favour of Jamma Dévamma, the widow of a predecessor.The hill sirdars or muttadars, however, objected that they had not been consulted and that no woman had ever ruled them before; and they carried off the unfortunate lady and murdered her. Mr. Freese, the Collector, moved up troops and confiscated the estate. Ananta Bhúpati was convicted of complicity in the murder and was confined in the fort at Gooty in Anantapur, where he subsequently died. In 1837 the zamindari was sold in, auction for arrears and bought in by Government for Rs.100.

The hill sirdars were not disturbed in their tenures, and were given pattas for their muttasdum se bene gesserint; but they found their status seriously lowered by their being subordinated to an ordinary ámin, and they grew discontented and finally united to restore the Bhúpati family by force. They withheld their rents, barricaded the hills, and made constant excursions with fire and sword against the villages in the plains. They set up one Chinna Bhúpati, a lad of nineteen, as their 'Rája,' and for three years, from 1845 to 1848, they successfully held their jungles against the troops employed against them, only abandoning their enterprise at last on the promise of an amnesty to all concerned. Chinna Bhúpati gave himself up and was granted villages worth Rs. 4,000 annually as maintenance for himself and his three brothers, the representatives of the ancient zamindars of Golgonda.

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In 1857-58, during the excitement of the Mutiny, another insurrection, having a similar object to the last, broke out under the leadership of Chinna Bhúpati' s nephew Sanyási Bhúpati. The Sibbandi corps under its Commandant, Captain Owen, assisted by some of the leading hill sirdars, promptly put it

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