will not eat food cooked in water (kachchi) except from Brahmans. According to another account they will not eat kachchi or pakki cooked by any other caste but their own. They salute in the páélagi form, and receive in return the blessing (asís) from strangers. They salute the father-in-law of their sons or daughters in the form Rám! Rám! Women are fairly well treated, but hard worked. When a stranger comes into the house the wife falls on his feet and gives him tobacco. This is known as bhentna.

12. Some are non-occupancy tenants; many are hired ploughmen (halwaha). The usual wages are two Occupation. and-a-half sers of grain in the local weight per diem, and a special ration (sídha) on holidays. They work, as in Bihâr, at fishing, well sinking, building mud walls, mat and basket-making, preparing saltpetre, doing earthwork on tanks and roads, watching fields and villages. But in some places they have an indifferent reputation, particularly in Gorakhpur.'

Distribution of Binds according to the Census of 1591.

1 Report, Inspector-General of Police, North-Western Provinces, 1868, page 51.

Distribution of Binds according to the Census of 1891-concld.

Bisâti-(Bisát "goods spread out for sale; Sanskrit, visrita "extended").-A small pedlar, hawker, or huckster, who sells petty goods of European manufacture, such as needles and pins, tape, buttons, stationery, hardware, etc. They are a purely occupational caste, and nearly all Muhammadans. According to the Census Returns they have a curious list of sectional names-Banjâra, Mughal, Râjput, and Shaikh. The Bisâti sells much the same class of goods as the Boxwâla ("the man of the box"), who hawks smali ware at European houses.

Distribution of the Bisátis according to the Census of 1891.

Distribution of the Bisátis according to the Census of 1891-concld.

Bisen.-A powerful sept of Râjputs found in considerable numbers in the Allahâbâd, Benares, Gorakhpur, and Faizâbâd Divisions. The head of the sept is the Râja of Majhauli, in Pargana Salempur Majhauli, of Gorakhpur. They as well as the Donwâr (q. v.) claim descent from one Mayûra Bhatta, who is said to have been a descendant of Jamadagni Rishi of the race of Bhrigu. Regarding this personage the local tradition is very vague. Some say he came from Hastinapur and was the son of one Aswathâma; others that he was an emigrant from Mahâ

râshtra or the Marhatta country. He read Sanskrit for a while at Benares, and became a proficient in astrology. Quitting that city at last under a divine impulse he settled at Kakradih, a village in Pargana Sikandarpur, of Azamgarh. The whole of that Pargana came gradually under his authority. His domestic arrangements illustrate a period when the bonds of caste, as we know them, were unknown. He is said to have had three wives, first a Brâhmani named Nâgseni ; the second Sûrajprabha, a Sûrajbans Râjputni; the third Haikumâri, a Gautam Bhuînhârin. By his wife Sûrajprabha he had a son, Biswa or Bissu Sen, who was the ancestor of the Bisen sept of Chhatris; by Haikumâri, Balkal or Bagmar Sahi, the ancestor of the Bhuînhâr families of Kuwâri and Tamkûhi; by Nâgsen, Nages, Nagesar or Nâgsen; and by a Kurmin concubine Indradawwan Mal, from whom sprang the Mals of Azamgarh, of whom a separate account will be given. He expelled the Bhars, and finally went on a pilgrimage to the Himalaya, where he died. There are thus a family of Misr Brâhmans, and a large half Kurmi clan which claim common descent with the Majhauli Bisen family.

The Gonda branch.

2. "In the reign of Akbar and with the fall of the Kalhans rule, the Bisens, who subsequently, under the Râjas of Gonda, took a leading position among the trans-Ghagra powers appear for the first time on the stage of history. The clan is one of the most numerous in Eastern Oudh, and is scattered in clusters of small Zamîndâri communities throughout the Districts of Gonda, Faizâbâd, and Partâbgarh, with the river Kuâno for its northern and the Ganges for its southern limit. Its principal seat is beyond the boundaries of Oudh at Majhauli, in Gorakhpur, and its members differ from those of many of the other ruling clans in having no recollection of a departure from some distant home in the West, and being unable to connect their countless houses by any intelligible pedigree. They admit that they are Bhumiya Thâkurs, or indigenous, as far as they can ascertain, in their present territory. It is true that they assert their descent from a common ancestor, Mayûra Rishi; and in thus deriving themselves from a mythical religious character outside the distinctions of caste, agree with others of the less aristocratic among the local Chhatri families who are unable to claim any connection with the heroes of the Solar and Lunar races. The ties of common clanship are very vaguely recognised, and I believe

that the Bisen of Majhauli has always declined to confirm them by eating with even the great homonymous chieftains of Gonda and Râmpur, in Faizâbâd. Those settled in Oudh were all of them before the time of Akbar in the position of ordinary village zamîndârs, dividing their inheritance among all the males on the ordinary coparcenary principles, and it was not till later that the title and position of Râja were acquired by a few fortunate houses to the extreme north and extreme south of their settlements. At the centre, in Faizâbâd, they always remained in a subordinate position,"

3. Of the Faizâbâd branch Mr. Carnegy writes :- "What their claim may be to being placed under the The Partâbgarh branch. Sombansi line is not clear. Their avowed

chief is the Râja of Majhauli, in Gorakhpur. In Oudh we have no less than thirteen chiefs of this clan, and their colonies are principally to be found in the Partâbgarh District, but also in Bahrâich, Gonda, Daryâbâd, and Sultânpur. The local heads are the Râja of Kâlakânkar, and the Râjas of Manikpur and Bhinga. Sir H. M. Elliot affirms that the present Râja of Majhauli is in the one hundred and fifteenth generation from Mayûra Bhatta, the devotee. The Oudh branch state that they broke off from the parent stem in the person of Râê Hûm, and settled in the Province under the wing of Mânik Chand, the then powerful Gaharwâr Râja of Manikpur, he who so happily picked up the foundling mother of all the Kânhpuriya clan. Within the last few years the Râja of Majhauli took to himself a wife from the Râjkumâr house of Dera, a sure indication that the Bisens (indigenous devotee Chhatris of Gorakhpur though they be) are higher in the social scale than the Râjkumâr offshoot of the Mainpuri ex-convert Chauhâns." 4. From Gorakhpur it is now reported that they intermarry with the septs of the Sirnet, Hayobans, The Gorakhpur branch. Baghel, Chauhân, Chandel, Gaharwâr, Sûrajbansi, Râjkumar, Chandrabansi, Sombansi, Gautam, Kausik, Gandhwariya, Hâra, Kachhwâha, Râna, Nâgbansi and Jâdon. In Jaunpur they take brides from the Bais, Nikumbh, Chaupat Khambh, and Kharagbâns, and give girls to the Nikumbh, Raghubansi, Bachgoti, Râjkumâr, and Sombansi. In Gonda they are reported to give brides to the Sirnet, Raikwâr, Janwâr, Chauhân,

1 Gonda Settlement Report, 15.