178 
G. N. Dutt— History of the Hutiva Raj. 
[No. 2, 
History of the Hutiva Ttaj with some unrecorded events of the administra¬ 
tion of Warren Hastings and of the Indian Mutiny.—By Girindra Nath 
Dutt. 
(With a Genealogical Table.) 
The Rajas of Hntwa are of the same caste as the Rajas of Benares, 
Bettiah, and Tikari. They are popularly called Babhans or Ehuinhar 
Babhans, to which caste the majority of the landed aristocracy of Behar 
belong. Although the origin of the Bhuinhars is much disputed, there 
is every reason to believe that they had been swaying over Behar 
from a prehistoric age. The word “ Babhan ” is neither Sanskrit nor 
Prakrit. But the word distinctly appears to have been used in the 
inscriptions of Asoka and in the Buddhist Suttas in the sense of 
Brahmin. This, as well as their locale , the cradle and arena of 
Buddhism, has led antiquarians to believe the Babhans to be those 
Brahmins who had turned Buddhists in the palmy days of Buddhism, 
but had forsaken Buddhism after its downfall and usurped the lands 
of the Buddhist monasteries for which they were called “ Bhuinhars, ” 
which too is not a Sanskrit word. The Pandits hold them to be 
“ Murdhabhisiktas,” a caste, mentioned in Mann and other Smritis, 
intermediate between the Brahmin and the Kshatriya, whilst the 
Babhans hold themselves to be those Brahmins who had, out of the 
six duties enjoined, forsaken three and allege the term to be a phonetic 
contraction of Brahmin. The Desabali, 1 (a rare MSS. in the collection of 
the Asiatic Society of Bengal) which narrates the conquest of a Buddhist 
king, speaks of a king Ratul, who had settled at Amnour making 
friendship with the Bhuinhars there, and who subsequently conquered 
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