It was formed at Phillour in 1858 by Major J. C. Innes from men of the 3rd, 36th and 61st Bengal Native Infantry regiments who remained loyal to the British East India Company[1] during the Indian Mutiny, and designated The Loyal Purbiah Regiment.
[2] These men were designated as Purbiyas, Purbiah, or Poorbeah meaning Easterners and were recruited from the region stretching from Agra to Bihar.
[3] It was subsequently re-designated as follows:- Its final designation came in 1903 with the Kitchener reforms of the Indian Army.
During World War I they were part of the 22nd (Lucknow) Brigade, first attached to the 8th Lucknow Division in India on internal security duties the brigade was then transferred to Egypt as part of the 11th Indian Division.
[4] After World War I the infantry of the Indian Army was restructured by the mass amalgamation of single battalion units into a smaller number of multi-battalion regiments.