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Rajshahi Raj was a large feudatory kingdom which occupied a vast position of Bengal (Present day West Bengal, India and Bangladesh). It was the second largest zamindari with an area of about 33,670 km2, after the Burdwan Raj. The zamindari came into being during the early part of the 18th century when Nawab Murshid Quli Khan was the Dewan / Subahdar of Bengal (1704–1727). The family ruled their dominions and estates from the Natore Palace in present day Bangladesh. A member of this Raj family, Maharaja Jagadindra Narayan Ray, was a patron of cricket, and wanted to defeat the British in their own game of Cricket. His rival was the Maharaja of Koch Bihar.〔(Maharaja of Natore: A patron of Cricket )〕 ==History== Many old aristocrats and lords lost their estates during the rule of the Nawab Murshid Quli Khan. Besides, many zamindars lost their zamindari on account of their disobedience and rebellion. Murshid Quli Khan settled these zamindaries with his trusted followers. In this process of replacement the most fortunate beneficiary was the Rajshahi zamindari. The family also benefited by another feature of nawab's revenue policy of encouragement to the formation of big zamindaries. The Rajshahi Raj family traced its origin to Kamdev Rai, a tahsildar of the Puthia Raj family. Kamdev had three sons Ramjivan, Raghunandan and Bishnuram. Raghunandan was the very promising and enterprising. Raja Darpanarain, the zamindar of Puthia, and Murshid Quli Khan had significant contributions behind Raghunandan's rise to prominence. Raghunandan sided with Murshid Quli Khan in his entanglement with the Subahdar, the Prince Azim-us-Shan, the grandson of Emperor Aurangzeb and thus won the confidence of the nawab. Again, when the diwani was transferred to Murshidabad, he was appointed in a similar capacity as his master's representative there. During this time he came in close contact of Murshid Quli Khan and secured his confidence. Which is why the ''naib'' (later ruler of Bengal) trusted him and let him set up the dynasty. Just a few zamindars controlled half of the total landed property of Bengal while the colonial state was forming in the last decades of the 18th century. The colonial state viewed these princely zamindaris as potential threats to the security of the new state, because their power were so great that they could at any opportune moment combine and put the colonial state in great jeopardy. Hence it became a policy of the government to weaken these estates, if not destroy them altogether. One of the strategies to implement this design was the ruthless operation of the sunset law (law which required the lords to submit their revenues by sunset). In 1788, in her old age, Rani Bhabani transferred the zamindari to her adopted son Raja Ramkrishna, then forty years old.〔(Encyclopedia Article on the Raj )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rajshahi Raj family」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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