The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India | Page 7

sacrificial meal. 91. Development of the
occupational caste from the tribe. 92. Veneration of the caste
implements. 93. The caste panchayat and its code of offences. 94. The
status of impurity. 95. Caste and Hinduism. 96. The Hindu reformers.
97. Decline of the caste system.

1. The Central Provinces.
The territory controlled by the Chief Commissioner of the Central
Provinces and Berar has an area of 131,000 square miles and a
population of 16,000,000 persons. Situated in the centre of the Indian
Peninsula, between latitudes 17°47' and 24°27' north, and longitudes
76° and 84° east, it occupies about 7.3 per cent of the total area of
British India. It adjoins the Central India States and the United
Provinces to the north, Bombay to the west, Hyderabad State and the
Madras Presidency to the south, and the Province of Bihar and Orissa
to the east. The Province was constituted as a separate administrative
unit in 1861 from territories taken from the Peshwa in 1818 and the
Maratha State of Nagpur, which had lapsed from failure of heirs in
1853. Berar, which for a considerable previous period had been held on
a lease or assignment from the Nizam of Hyderabad, was incorporated
for administrative purposes with the Central Provinces in 1903. In 1905
the bulk of the District of Sambalpur, with five Feudatory States
inhabited by an Uriya-speaking population, were transferred to Bengal
and afterwards to the new Province of Bihar and Orissa, while five
Feudatory States of Chota Nagpur were received from Bengal. The

former territory had been for some years included in the scope of the
Ethnographic Survey, and is shown coloured in the annexed map of
linguistic and racial divisions.
The main portion of the Province may be divided, from north-west to
south-east, into three tracts of upland, alternating with two of plain
country. In the north-west the Districts of Sangor and Damoh lie on the
Vindhyan or Malwa plateau, the southern face of which rises almost
sheer from the valley of the Nerbudda. The general elevation of this
plateau varies from 1500 to 2000 feet. The highest part is that
immediately overhanging the Nerbudda, and the general slope is to the
north, the rivers of this area being tributaries of the Jumna and Ganges.
The surface of the country is undulating and broken by frequent low
hills covered with a growth of poor and stunted forest. The second
division consists of the long and narrow valley of the Nerbudda, walled
in by the Vindhyan and Satpura hills to the north and south, and
extending for a length of about 200 miles from Jubbulpore to Handia,
with an average width of twenty miles. The valley is situated to the
south of the river, and is formed of deep alluvial deposits of extreme
richness, excellently suited to the growth of wheat. South of the valley
the Satpura range or third division stretches across the Province, from
Amarkantak in the east (the sacred source of the Nerbudda) to Asirgarh
in the Nimar District in the west, where its two parallel ridges bound
the narrow valley of the Tapti river. The greater part consists of an
elevated plateau, in some parts merely a rugged mass of hills hurled
together by volcanic action, in others a succession of bare stony ridges
and narrow fertile valleys, in which the soil has been deposited by
drainage. The general elevation of the plateau is 2000 feet, but several
of the peaks rise to 3500, and a few to more than 4000 feet. The
Satpuras form the most important watershed of the Province, and in
addition to the Nerbudda and Tapti, the Wardha and Wainganga rivers
rise in these hills. To the east a belt of hill country continues from the
Satpuras to the wild and rugged highlands of the Chota Nagpur plateau,
on which are situated the five States recently annexed to the Province.
Extending along the southern and eastern faces of the Satpura range lies
the fourth geographical division, to the west the plain of Berar and
Nagpur, watered by the Purna, Wardha and Wainganga rivers, and

further east the Chhattisgarh plain, which forms the upper basin of the
Mahanadi. The Berar and Nagpur plain contains towards the west the
shallow black soil in which autumn crops, like cotton and the large
millet juari, which do not require excessive moisture, can be
successfully cultivated. This area is the great cotton-growing tract of
the Province, and at present the most wealthy. The valleys of the
Wainganga and Mahanadi further east receive a heavier rainfall and are
mainly cropped with rice. Many small irrigation tanks for rice have
been built by the people themselves, and large tank and canal works are
now being undertaken by Government to protect the tract from the
uncertainty of the rainfall. South of