110 Notes on the Gurjat State of Patna. [No. 2, 
himself, and pleasing perhaps to a portion of his subjects, still the 
country paid heavily at the time for his restoration. While party 
spirit and enmity having now been excited, it was to be expected that, 
an occasion offering, conflicting interests might again stir them to a 
blaze ; and again, the plains of Patna having now been opened out 
to the view of the Mahrattas, it might be regarded as certain that their 
greed would spend itself on the first opportunity of home dissensions 
in depredatory incursions. And this prospect was indeed brought to 
issue as follows. Raee Singh retained his position for many years, but 
during this period the roused spirit of discontent and rebellion was 
spreading through the land, till ultimately it was brought to burst 
upon the unfortuuate Maharajah, then nearly 80 years old, by the 
intrigues of his second wife. The story is, that he had three wives, 
no offspring by the first, two boys by the second, and one son, the 
eldest of all, by the third. The second wife was fearful that the 
eldest son by the third Ranee would, as being his father’s favourite, 
succeed to the Guddee, unless during the Maharajah’s life she should 
take steps to prevent it. The measures she took for prevention were 
the exciting a general rebellion which resulted as before noted, in the 
flight of the Maharajah Raee Singh Deo to Sonepore. The Maharajah, 
however, frustrated the design of his second wife; for he took her 
with him to Patna, along with his grandson by his eldest born; and on 
his death three years afterwards, appointed him his successor by putting 
the regular Pugree on his head. During these three years, the whole 
of Patna was in a state of perfect anarchy. The Ranees at Patna 
were quarrelling for dominion, and their partizans were pillaging the 
country indiscriminately around. Life and property were nowhere 
secure. All respectable persons fled to Sonepore and were followed 
by numbers of the general population. On the death of the old 
Rajah the people acknowledged his appointed successor, who then 
returned to Patna. He was, however, but a youth and found none to 
advise or assist him, except such as had shared in the outrages of the 
interregnum. Even his father, dismayed at the state of general 
disturbance and disappointed at the preference given to his son, retired 
on a pilgrimage to Allahabad ane there died. The young Maharajah, 
Prithee Singh Deo lived only three years after succeeding to the 
Guddee. ‘The next ruler was Ramchundur Deo, the captive of the 
