156 
F. S. Growse —Notes on the Fatehpur District. 
[No. 3, 
river, is a contraction for Arindama, ‘ the subduer of enemies,’ which 
would seem to refer not so much to the depth of the stream as to the 
inaccessibility of its broken banks. The power of the family and the 
extent of its territory may have been greatly exaggerated, and certainly 
no external evidence of the truth of the local tradition has yet been sup¬ 
plied either by coins, or copper-plate inscriptions, as for the Gupta and 
Gaharwar dynasties, nor in temples of well-ascertained Gautam founda¬ 
tion, such as attest the wealth and magnificence of the Chandels. Nei¬ 
ther do the Muhammadan chronographers make much mention of the 
long struggle against the Imperial forces to which the Argal Raja attri¬ 
butes the total disappearance of all his family records. So far also as I 
am aware, there are no extensive ruins at Argal, such as might be 
expected at a place which for many centuries was the capital of an inde¬ 
pendent principality. But on this point I cannot speak from personal 
knowledge, as I have never visited the spot. Not only is it far off the 
beaten track, but the Raja dislikes being seen by Europeans, as his per¬ 
sonal surroundings are simply those of a small yeoman, and a visit dicta¬ 
ted chiefly by curiosity might be regarded as an intrusion. To such 
extreme indigence is he now reduced, that his eldest son, and consequent¬ 
ly the heir to one of the oldest titles in India, is now a Constable in 
the Hamirpur Police on a salary of Rs. 10 a month, and without much pros¬ 
pect of promotion, on account of his imperfect education. The second 
son has been given a small scholarship for his support, and is a pupil in 
the Government school in the town of Fatehpur, but though 15 years of 
age, he is only in the 9th class ; and thus there is little prospect of any 
revival of the family fortunes in this generation. 
As a set off to the want of material corroboration for the high pre¬ 
tensions of the Argal pedigree, it must be observed that the grants and 
migrations to which reference is therein made are ail accepted as true by 
cognate tribes in different parts of the Province, who have obviously no 
interest in maintaining a fictitious legend of Gautam pre-eminence and 
their own comparative inferiority. It may also be noted that according 
to a local saying, mentioned by Gen. Cunningham in Yol. XI of the 
Archaeological Survey, there was once a brick temple at every kos along 
the bank of the Rind. The word 4 bank’ must of course be interpreted 
in its very widest sense as including the whole of the valley and its 
neighbourhood, and the 4 kos’ as meaning not that the temples were at 
regular intervals of that distance, but that they were very numerous and 
close together. The two temples of Bahua and Tinduli might thus be 
included in the series, together with those that the General describes in 
the adjoining Pargana of Sarh Salimpur, and all may with great plausi¬ 
bility be ascribed to the Gautam Rajas, who have always been specially 
