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              SEEBA RAJAH AND SUITE.
                       (218)

THE Seeba Rajahs are descended from the same ancestral stock as the Kangra Rajahs, of whom a detailed account has been given under No. 216. About six hundred years ago Rajah Hurree Chund, one of the Kings of Kangra, is said to have formed a separate principality, the capital of which was Hurreepoor Goolier; and in the fourth generation after Hurree Chund, a younger brother of the reigning prince, by name Seebrun Chund, made himself independent in a tract of country on the left bank of the Beeas, calling the tract Seeba, after his own name, Seebrun. During the long period of Mahomedan and Sikh ascendancy, the Rajahs of Seeba maintained the integrity of their principality. When the Kangra district passed into the hands of the British Government in A.D. 1846, Rajah Ram Sing (the central figure in the Photograph) was the reigning chief. The income derived from his estates is about two thousand pounds sterling per annum. He lives at Dadah, which is within three or four miles of the Beeas river. For some years past Rajah Ram Sing has exercised the powers of an honorary magistrate, and the figure in the Photograph on the Rajah's left is the sheristadar, or ministerial officer of his court; the other is an armed attendant of the Rajpoot caste.