________________ History and Archaeology of Vaisali 441 the revenue, and a panchayat was chosen to settle all disputes. Ganga Deva was succeeded by his son Narsingh Deva, who is said to have had a quarrel with his kinsman, the king of Nepal, the upshot of which was that Mithila and Nepal were separated, never to be united again. Ram Singh Deva, who succeeded his father on the throne, was a pious devotee and a firm patron of sacred literature. Under his auspices, several wellknown commentaries on the Vedas were compiled; rules were framed for the guidance of Hindus in their religious and social observances; and an officer was appointed in each village to adjudicate upon all questions arising from the working of these new canons of conduct. Various reforms in the system of internal administration are also attributed to this king. In every village a police officer was appointed whose duty it was to make a daily report of all occurrences worthy of note to the chaudhri or head revenue-collector of the pargana; the latter being assigned, in return for his services, a certain quantity of land, the produce of which was appropriated by him and his heirs in office. To the same period, too, is assigned the rise of the system of patwaris or village accountants, who were, it is said, paid at the rate of Rs. 10 a month from the village funds. On the death of Ram Singh Deva, bis son, Sakti Singh, ascended the throne, but his despotism appears to have offended the nobles, and one of his ministers established a council of seven elders as a check upon the autocratic power of the king. His son Hara Singh Deva, the last of the line, is said to have prepared records of the caste subdivisions of the Brabmans and Karoa Kayasths within his dominions. Fortunately with this king we are on more certain ground than that of tradition. In 1323 the Emperor Tughlak Shah led his victorious forces into Tirhut on his march. back from the defeat of Babadur Shah, the rebellious Governor of Bengal. The fort of Hara Singh was taken, and the king himself fled northwards, and in his turn conquered the valley of Nepal, though he does not seem to have maintained any effectual authority over it. As Professor Bendall* [19] says : <<Until more evidence is forthcoming, it seems safer to regard Hara Singh and his ancestors, who reigned in Tirhut, Simraon and also possibly other parts of the Nepal Tarai, as at most titular kings of Nepal, even if they really claimed sovereignty over the valley of Nepal at all." Thakur Dynasty With the flight of Hara Singh, Tirbut became a dependency of the empire of Delhi, and Tughlak Shah placed it under Kamesvara Thakur, the founder of the Thakur dynasty, which continued to rule over Tirhut till early in the 16th century. * Bendall's History of Nepal, J. A. S. B., Part I, 1903. 28
