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NOVEMBER, 1918]
SIDE-LIGHTS ON OMICHUND
273
For the rest, he says that you and he are of the same mind and asks you to act in your oint interests boldly, so that the management of the whole affair shall appear to be in your own hands until the end of the business. He says you are not to worry about your home because he is here, and you should delay the departure of the friend (Watts) for a few days, in any case, as the business is not yet settled. As a soon as it is settled he will write at once what it is necessary for you to do.
It is not expedient to go into details because you know them and you are both in the same position, and he leaves the whole affair to you to deal with as you think best.
Date and Address of the Letter. It will be seen, then, from the general evidence available, that the date of Omichund's letter to Agha Petros is narrowed down to the week between the 30th May and 8th June 1757, and from the correspondence quoted in this discussion it can be actually fixed as during the night of the 30th-31st May, for the following reasons.
It was written by Omichund from a place apparently called Gaurthi, of which more anon, to Petros who was then at Murshidabad. It could not have been written at the latter place, nor after Omichund reached Calcutta, as he did not arrive until the 8th June, and it was received before that date at Murshidâbâd. So it must have been written on the way down, and Petros thought that his brother Grigor was present when it was written.c7 On the 3rd June Watts complains to Clive,as that "Omichund's four hours visit to Roydullub
Rai Durlabh) at Plassy has been the cause" of the set-back in the negotiations with Mir Ja'fir. From Orme we learn that Omichund twice gave Sorafton the slip on the way to Calcutta, at Käsimbâzâr and at Plassey, on the night of the 30th May, and that he did no see him again after his second absence until 3 p.m., on the 31st. In the interval Omichund had had his conference with Rai Durlabh, at which Grigor Arratoon must have been present and this was when he had the letter written to Petros. Rai Durlabh, Suraju'ddaula's diwan was then in favour of Mîr Ja'fir's claims; Grigor, the brother of Petros, was, as Gorgîn Khân a general in the service of Mîr Ja'fir's son-in-law. At the conference Omichund heard a rumour of a treaty between Mir Ja'fir and the English which deprived him of his claims,70 and his only chance of defeating it was to get Watts to remain at Murshidabad and thus fall into the hands of Suraju'ddaula. Accordingly, he first persuaded Rai Durlabh, and apparently Grigor also, to waver in their allegiance to Mîr Ja'fir, and then induced them to let him dictate
letter to Petros, with the sole object of delaying the departure of Watts and so upsetting the scheme in favour of Mîr Ja'fir. This does not imply that either Rai Durlabh or Grigor was aware of his real motive.
Omichund's plan miscarried because Petros remained loyal to Mîr Ja'fir and the English, and on the further journey down to Calcutta, Scrafton managed to allay the suspicions which gave rise to the letter. 71
The whole evidence thus shows that the letter was written in the early hours of the 31st May 1757.
66 Orme, History of Indostan, vol. II, p. 159.
67 See Watts's letter of the 8th June, quoted above. Petros n ust have told Watts that he thought his brother' wrote the letter or Watts would not have used the terms he employed in writing to Clive. It is quite likely in the whole circumstances that Grigor Arratoon was present and there is hothing in the history of the time to show that any other brother of Petros was of sufficient importance for Clive to am play him in a confidential capacity. The fairest assumption is that Grigor was the brother" meant by Petros, and it is not likely from the language in which the letter is couched, that the term 'brother merely meant some unnamed relative. Orme MSS., India, vol. IX, p. 2313.
Orme, History of Indostan, vol. II, pp. 168-159. To Orme, op. cit., loc. cit.
T1 Ibid, p. 159
