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G. N. Dutt —History of the Hutwa Raj. 
[No. 2, 
Husainpur Raj on behalf of Fateh Shahi, and the claim was treated in¬ 
admissible. Similar applications were also made in 1816 and 1821 with 
the same result. In June 1829 the great-grandson of Fateh Sbahi 
brought a regular suit for the recovery of the Raj, and it was dismissed 
as barred by limitation. A similar claim was again set up in 1848 with 
the like result. 
In 1784 when Fateh Shahi had commenced to quietly settle down, 
Babu Mahesh Dutt again applied for a Sanad for the zemiudary of 
Husainpur, and the Government wrote in reply to the Committee of 
Revenue, in their letter dated 2nd November, 1784, saying, that should 
they think it advisable to invest the petitioner with the zemindary of 
Husainpur, it should be done on the expressed conditions of his effectu¬ 
ally suppressing the depredations of Fateh Shahi, and if possible deliver¬ 
ing up his person to Government within the term of one year. At the 
same time they inserted a clause in his Sanad to the effect that, in the 
event of his failing in obtaining these ends either from negligence or any 
other cause, that might be deemed unsatisfactory by Government, upon 
a report thereof which the Committee was directed to make to Govern¬ 
ment on the expiration of the current Behar year, he would subject 
himself to immediate dispossession with the loss of every interest which 
he might hold in the land in question. {Vide Appendix). When the 
Government accordingly was about to confer upon Babu Mahesh Dutt 
Shahi the Husainpur Raj he died in 1785 A.D. It is said that the 
astrologers having predicted that Babu Mahesh Dutt’s lease of life was 
only for 22 years, his guardian Dhujju Singh hastened to marry him at 
an early age with the daughter of the Chainpur Babu, in order that 
he might have an issue to continue his line; 1 and requested the Babu 
to send the bride to the bridegroom’s house within the year of the mar¬ 
riage, which was contrary to his family custom. The bride’s father sent 
a haughty answer of refusal, whereupon Dhujju Singh had Mahesh Dutt 
married again at once for the second time to a poor country girl who 
gave birth 2 to a posthumus child, afterwards Maharaja Chattradhari 
1 In this marriage of the orphan Mahesh Dntt Shahi, the ceremony called “ Imli 
Ghotna,” by which the matron of the house, placing the bridegroom on her lap, 
has to taste a mango leaf chewed by him, was performed by Dhujju Singh’s wife. 
Dhujju Singh’s descendants are therefore to some extent looked down by their 
jealous clansmen who erroneously allege they have lost their caste thereby. 
2 It is said that when the bride was being taken to the bridegroom’s house in 
a Palki, a big cobra with upraised hood interposed at a place, south of the present 
Hutwa, and would not let the Palki pass. The astrologers were consulted and they 
declared this to be an auspicious omen, showing that the bride would be the mother 
of a mighty ruler who would bring the country under one umbrella 
Hence the Maharaja was so named. 
