BOMBAY PRESEDENCY, a province or presidency of British India, consisting partly of British districts. and partly of native states under the administration of a governor. This terri tory extends from 13° 53' to 2SD 45' N., and from 66' 4o' to 763 3o' E., and is bounded on the north by Baluchis.tan, the Punjab and Rajputana, on the east by Indore, the Central Provinces and Hyderabad; on the south by Madras and Mysore, and on the west by the Arabian sea. Within these limits lie the Portuguese settle ments of Diu, Damaun and Goa, and the native state of Baroda which has direct relations \-c-ith the government of India. Until 1932 Bombay included. politically, the Aden Protectorate. The total area, including Sind. is 1;2.265 sq.m.. of which 123.541 sq.m. are under British rule. The total population 0931) is 26. 347,52o, of which 2I,St-so.cso are resident in British territory. The province is divided into four cornmi,zionerships and 2S districts. The four divisions are the northern or Gujarat, the central or Dec can, the southern or Camatic, and Sind. 'The 23 districts are: ; Bomba.7 City, Bombay Suburban, Ahmedabad, Broach, Kaira, , Panch Mahals, Surat, Thana, Ahmednagar. Khandesh (two dis tricts) Nasik, Poona, Satara, Sholapur, Belgaum, Bijapur. Dhar war. Kanara, Kolaba, Ratnagiri, Karachi, Hyderabad, Larkana, Nawabshah, Sukkur, Shik-arpur, Thar and Parkar, and Upper Sind Frontier. There are 151 Indian States which are administered either political agents or by the collectors of the districts in which the smaller states are situated. The chief g,roups are the Western India_ States agency (Cutch, Kathiawar and Palampur), Kantha agency (5f States) . Rewa Kantha agency (62 States ), and Cambay (Kaira) agency. Others (agencies in brackets) are Bansda, Dharampur and Sachin (Surat), Janjira (Kolaba ), Jaw har (Thana), Sawantwari (Belgaum), Akalkot (Sholapur), Bhor (Poona), Aundh and Phaltan (Satara), Sure:ana (Nasik). Jath (Bijapur), Savanur (Dharwar), Khairpur (Suk_kur), Kolhapur with nine feudatories, and the Southern Mahratta country States. Daphlapur lapsed to Jath in 1917. The native States under the supen-ision of the Government of Bombay are divided, historically and geographically, into two main groups. The northern or Gujarat group includes the territories of the gaekwor of Baroda, ,; with Cutch, Palanpur, Rewa Kantha -a.nd Mahi Kantha. These territories, with the exception of Cutch, have an historical connec ' tion, as being the allies or tributaries of the Gaekwar in 1305, when final engagements were concluded between that prince and the British Government. The southem or Mahratta group includes Kolhapur,Akalkot,Sawantwari, and the Satara and southern Mah ratta Jagirs, and has an historical bond of union in the friendship they showed to the British in their final strug-gle with the power of the peshv:a in ISIS. The remaining territories may conveniently be divided into a small cluster of independent zamindaris. situated in the wild and hilly tracts at the northern extremity of the Sahyadri range, and certain principalities which, from their his tory or geographical position, are to some extent isolated from the rest of the presidency.
Physical Aspects.—'The Bombay Presidency consists of a long . strip of land along the Indian ocean from the south of the Punjab to the north of Mysore. The coast is rock-bound and difficult of access: and though it contains several bays forming fair-weather ports for vessels engaged in the coasting trade, Bombay, Karachi in Sind, Marmagoa and Karwar alone have harbours sufficiently land-locked to protect shipping during the prevalence of the south west monsoon. The coast-line is regular and little broken, save by the gulfs of Cambay and Cutch, between which lies the peninsula of Kathiawar.
A range of hills, known as the Western Ghats, runs down the coast, at places rising in splendid bluffs and precipices from the water's edge, at others retreating inland, and leaving a flat fertile strip of 5-5om. between their base and the sea.
Mountains.—In the north of the presidency on the right bank of the Indus, the Hala mountains, a continuation of the great Suleiman range, separate British India from the dominions of the khan of Kalat. Leaving Sind, and passing by the ridges of low sandhills—the leading feature of the desert east of the Indus—and the isolated hills of Cutch and Kathiawar, which form geologically the western extremity of the Aravalli range, the first extensive mountain range is that separating Gujarat from the States of cen tral India. The rugged and mountainous country south of the Tapti forms the northern extremity of the Sahyadri or Western Ghats. This great range of hills, sometimes overhanging the ocean, and generally running parallel to it at a distance nowhere exceed ing 50m., with an average elevation of about I,800ft., contains individual peaks rising to more than double that height. They stretch southwards for upwards of 5oom., with a breadth of 10-2o miles. The western declivity is abrupt, the land at the base of the hills being but slightly raised above the level of the sea. As is usually the case with the trap formation, they descend to the plains in terraces with abrupt fronts. The landward slope is in many places very gentle, the crest of the range being sometimes but slightly raised above the level of the plateau of the Deccan. Their best-known elevation is Mahabaleshwar, 4,5ooft. high, a fine pla teau, 37m. from Poona, covered with rich vegetation, and used by the Bombay Government as its summer retreat. In the neighbour hood of the Sahyadri hills, particularly towards the northern ex tremity of the range, the country is rugged and broken, containing isolated peaks, masses of rock and spurs, which, running east ward, form watersheds for the great rivers of the Deccan. The Satpura hills separate the valley of the Tapti from the valley of the Nerbudda, and the district of Khandesh from the territories of Indore. The Satmala or Ajanta hills, which are rather the northern slope of the plateau than a distinct range of hills, separate Khandesh from the Nizam's dominions.
Plains.—The more level parts of Bombay consist of five well demarcated tracts—Sind, Gujarat, the Konkan, the Deccan and the Carnatic. Sind, or the lower valley of the Indus, is very flat, with but scanty vegetation, and depending for productiveness on irrigation. Gujarat, except on its northern parts, consists of rich, highly cultivated alluvial plains, watered by the Tapti and Ner budda, but not much subject to inundation. The Konkan lies between the Western Ghats and the sea. It is a rugged and diffi cult country, intersected by creeks, and abounding in isolated peaks and detached ranges of hills. The plains of the Deccan and Khandesh are watered by large rivers, but as the rainfall is uncer tain, they are generally, during the greater part of the year, bleak and devoid of vegetation. The Carnatic plain, or the country south of the River Kistna, consists of extensive tracts of black or cotton soil in a high state of cultivation.
Rivers.—The chief river of western India is the Indus, which enters the presidency from the north of Sind and flowing south in a tortuous course, falls into the Arabian sea by several mouths. In the dry season the bed varies at different places from 480-1,600 yards. The flood season begins in March and continues till Sep tember, the average depth of the river rising from 9-24f t., and the velocity of the current increasing from 3-7m. per hour. Next to the Indus comes the Nerbudda. Rising in the Central Provinces, and traversing the dominions of Holkar, the Nerbudda enters the presidency at the north-western extremity of the Khandesh dis trict, flows eastwards, and after a course of loom. from its source, falls into the gulf of Cambay, forming near its mouth the alluvial plain of Broach, one of the richest districts of Bombay. The Tapti enters the presidency a few miles south of the town of Burhanpur, flows eastwards through the Khandesh, Rewa Kantha and Surat, and falls into the gulf of Cambay, a few miles west of the town of Surat. Besides these there are many minor streams. The streams which, rising in the Sahyadri range, or Western Ghats, flow west wards into the Arabian sea are of little importance. During the rains they are formidable torrents, but with the return of the fair weather they dwindle away, and during the hot season, with a few exceptions, they almost dry up. Clear and rapid as they descend the hills, on reaching the lowlands of the Konkan they become muddy and brackish creeks. The Kanarese rivers have a larger body of water and a more regular flow than the streams of the Konkan. One of them, the Sharawati, forcing its way through the western ridge of the Ghats, plunges from the high to the low coun try by a succession of falls, the principal of which is 89oft. in height. The Sahyadri or Western Ghats also throw off to the east wards the two principal rivers of the Madras Presidency, the Godavari and the Kistna.
Lakes.—The Manchar lake is situated on the right bank of the Indus. During inundations it attains a length of 2om. and a breadth of 1om., covering a total area estimated at i8osq.m. The remarkable Runn or lake of Cutch is a salt marsh, an inland lake, or an arm of the sea with an area of 8,000sq.m. according to the season of the year, and forms the western boundary of the prov ince of Gujarat. When flooded during the rains it unites the gulfs of Cutch and Cambay, and converts the territory of Cutch into an island.
Geology.—South of Gujarat nearly the whole of Bombay is covered by the horizontal lava flows of the Deccan Trap series, and these flows spread over the greater part of the Kathiawar penin sula and extend into Cutch. In Cutch and Kathiawar they are underlaid by Jurassic and Neocomian beds. The Jurassic beds are marine and contain numerous Ammonites, but the beds which are referred to the Neocomian include a series of sandstones and shales with remains of plants. Several of the plants are identical with forms which occur in the upper portion of the Gondwana sys tem. Tertiary limestones, sandstones and shales overlie the Dec can Trap in Cutch, but the greatest development of deposits of this age is to be met with on the western side of the Indus (see SIND). The plain of Sind and of eastern Gujarat is covered by alluvium and wind-blown sand.
Climate.—Great varieties of climate are met with in the presi dency. In its extreme dryness and heat, combined with a sandy soil, Upper Sind resembles the African deserts. The mean maxi mum temperature at Hyderabad, in Lower Sind, during the six hot test months of the year is 98° in the shade, and the water of the Indus reaches blood-heat ; in Upper Sind it is even hotter, and the thermometer has been known to register 130° in the shade. In Cutch and Gujarat the heat, though less, is still very great. The Konkan is hot and moist, the fall of rain during the monsoon sometimes approaching 30o inches. The tableland of the Deccan above the Ghats, on the contrary, has an agreeable climate except in the hot months, as has also the southern Mahratta country. Bombay island itself, though in general cooled by the sea breeze, is oppressively hot during May and October. The south-west monsoon generally sets in about the first week in June.
Forests.—Bombay Presidency possesses two great classes of forests—those of the hills and those of the alluvial plains. The hill forests are scattered over a wide area, extending from 23° to i4° N. lat., and 12% of the total area is forested. Most of them lie among the Sahyadri hills or Western Ghats. The alluvial forests lie in Sind, on or close to the banks of the Indus. Besides the tim ber trees (teak, blackwood, etc.) there are others which are valu able for their fruit and nuts. The jungle tribes collect gum from several varieties of trees, and in Sind the Forest Department derives a small revenue from lac. The palms of the presidency consist of cocoa-nut, date, palmyra and areca catechu.
It is believed that about moo B.C. an export trade from western India to the Red sea by way of East Africa existed, and that before 75o B.c. a trade had sprung up with Babylon by way of the Persian Gulf. It was by this latter route that the traders brought back to India the Brahmi alphabet, the art of brick-making and the legend of the Flood. Later still the settle ment of Brahmans along the west coast had already Aryanized the country in religion, and to some extent in language, before the Persian conquest of the Indus valley at the close of the 6th century B.C. The Persian dominion did not long survive; and the march of Alexander the Great down the Indus paved the way for Chandra gupta and the Maurya empire. On the death of Asoka in 231 B.C. the empire of the Mauryas broke up, and their heritage in the west fell to the Andhra dynasty of the Satavahanas of Paithan on the Godavari, a Dravidian family whose dominion by 200 B.C. stretched across the peninsula from the deltas of the Godavari and Kistna to Nasik and the Western Ghats. About A.D. 210, however, their power in the west seems to have died out, and their place was taken by the foreign dynasty of the Kshaharatas, the Saka satraps of Surashtra (Kathiawar), who in I20 had mastered Ujjain and Gujarat and had built up a rival kingdom to the north. Since about A.D. 4o the coast cities had been greatly enriched by trade with the Roman empire, which both the Satavahanas and the satraps did much to encourage; but after the fall of Palmyra (273) and the extinction of the main Kshaharata dynasty (c. 300) this commerce fell into decay. In the next century and a half, short-lived Saka dynasties succeeded one another until, about 388, the country was conquered by the Guptas of Magadha, who kept a precarious tenure of it till about 470, when their empire was destroyed by the White Huns, or Ephthalites (q.v.), who, after breaking the power of Persia and assailing the Kushan king dom of Kabul, poured into India, conquered Sind, and established their dominions as far south as the Nerbudda.
Under the Hun tyranny, which lasted till the overthrow of the White Huns on the Oxus by the Turks (c. 565), native dynasties had survived, or new ones had established themselves. A new power, too, appeared, from the north; the Gurjaras (ancestors, it is supposed, of the Gujar caste), who had probably entered India with the White Huns, established their power over Gujarat and (c. 600) overran north-eastern Kathiawar, made the rajah of Valabhi their tributary, and established a branch at Broach (585 740). During the short-lived empire of Harsha (d. 647 or 648), Malwa, Gujarat and Kathiawar were subject to his sway; but the southern boundary of his kingdom was the Nerbudda, south of which the Chalukyas in the 7th century, having overcome the Rashtrakutas and other rivals, had absorbed the smaller kingdoms into their empire. In 710-711 (Ali. 92) the Arabs invaded India, and in 712 conquered and established themselves in Sind; they did not, however, attempt any serious attack on the Gurjara and Chalukya empires, confining themselves to more or less serious raids. In 77o they destroyed the city of Valabhi and, as already mentioned, brought its dynasty to an end. Meanwhile the Chalukyas, after successfully struggling with the Pallavas (whose capital was taken by Vikramaditya II., c. 740), had in their turn succumbed to their ancient rivals the Rashtrakutas, who suc ceeded to the bulk of their dominions, including Gujarat, where they had set up a branch line. For some two centuries (c. 9J0) there was a balance of power between the Gurjaras and Rashtrakutas, neither kingdom being strong enough to encroach on the other to any extent. The Rashtrakutas were, moreover, debarred from large schemes of conquest by dissensions with the branch dynasty which they had set up in Gujarat. Under them the Konkan and the coast farther south were governed by chiefs of the Silahara family, whose rule is mainly notable for the revival of trade with the Persian gulf and, doubtless as a result of this, the arrival in 775 on the west coast of a number of Parsee refugees, who found, in a country where three religions were already equally honoured, the toleration denied to them in Mus sulman Persia. But in the loth century the Rashtrakuta power began to break up, in 961 Mularaja Solanki (Chalukya) con quered the kingdom of Anhilvada (Anhilvara) in Gujarat, where his dynasty reigned till 1242; and twelve • years later the Chalukyas once more overthrew the Rashtrakutas in the Deccan, establishing their capital at Kalyani, while a branch line was set up in southern Gujarat. Farther south the Silaharas, however, continued to rule the coast, and succeeded in maintaining their independence until after the final fall of the Chalukyas in 1192.
In 1023 Mahmud of Ghazni had already invaded Gujarat with a large army, destroyed the national Hindu idol of Somnath, and carried away an immense booty. Mohammed Ghori also invaded Gujarat, and left a garrison in its capital. But it was not till after the Mussulman power was firmly established in northern India that the Mohammedan sovereigns of Delhi attempted the con quest of the south. In 1294 the emperor Ala-ud-din first invaded the Deccan, and in 1297 he conquered Gujarat. In 1312 the Mohammedan arms were triumphant through the Mahratta coun try; and seven years later the whole of Malabar fell a prey to the invaders. In the middle of the 14th century the weakness of the Delhi sovereigns tempted the governors of provinces to revolt against their distant master, and to form independent kingdoms. In this way the Bahmani kingdom was established in the Deccan, and embraced a part of the Bombay presidency. Ahmednagar and Gujarat also became the seats of a new kingdom. In 1573 Akbar conquered Gujarat and reannexed it to the empire; in 1599 he effected the reconquest of Khandesh, and in 160o that of Ahmednagar. During the latter part of the 17th century the Mahrattas rose to power, and almost every part of the country now comprising the presidency of Bombay fell under their sway. In 1498 the Portuguese came first to Calicut, their earliest pos session in the presidency being the island of Anjidiv. After their victory at Diu over the Egyptian fleet their mastery of the Indian ocean was undisputed, and they proceeded to establish themselves on the coast. They captured Goa in 1510, Malacca in 1511, and Ormuz in 1515. They next took advantage of the decay of the kingdom of Gujarat to occupy Chaul (1531), Bassein with its de pendencies, including Bombay (1534), Diu (1535) and Daman The first English settlement in the Bombay presidency was in 1618, when the East India Company established a factory at Surat, protected by a charter obtained from the emperor Jahangir. In 1626 the Dutch and English made an unsuccessful attempt to gain possession of the island of Bombay, and in 1653 proposals were suggested for its purchase from the Portuguese. (See BOMBAY.) In 1803 the Bombay presidency included only Salsette, the islands of the harbour (since 1774), Surat and Bankot (since 1756) ; but between this date and 1827 the framework of the presidency took its present shape. The Gujarat districts were taken over by the Bombay government in 1805 and enlarged in 1818; and the first measures for the settlement of Kathiawar and Mahi Kantha were taken between 1807 and 1820. The dominions of Poona, Ahmednagar, Nasik, Sholapur, Belgaum, Kaladgi and Dharwar, were included in the presidency, the settle ment of which was completed by Mountstuart Elphinstone, gov ernor from 1819 to 1827. His policy was to rule as far as possible on native lines, avoiding all changes for which the population was not yet ripe. The period that followed is notable mainly for the enlargement of the presidency through the lapse of certain native states, by the addition of Aden (1839) and Sind (1843), and the lease of the Panch Mahals from Sindhia (1853). Out breaks among the troops at Karachi, Ahmedabad and Kolhapur were quickly put down, two regiments being disbanded, and the rebellions in Gujarat, among the Bhils, and in the southern Mahratta country were local and isolated. Under Sir Bartle Frere (1862-67) agricultural prosperity reached its highest point, as a result of the American Civil War, and the consequent enormous demand for Indian cotton in Europe. The money thus poured into the country produced an epidemic of speculation known as the "share mania" (1864-65), which ended in a commercial crisis and the failure of the bank of Bombay (1866). Sir Bartle Frere encouraged the completion of the great trunk lines of railways, and with the funds obtained by the demolition of the town walls (1862) he began the magnificent series of public buildings that now adorn Bombay.
During recent times the entire history of Bombay has been sadly affected by plague and famine. The great cities of Bom bay, Karachi and Poona suffered most severely. At Bombay, in March 1898, a riot begun by Mohammedan weavers was not sup pressed until several Europeans had been fatally injured. In Nasik district, in January 1898, the native chairman of the plague committee was brutally murdered by a mob. Bombay, like the Central Provinces, suffered from famine twice within three years. The failure of the monsoon of 1896 caused widespread distress throughout the Deccan, over an area of 46,0oosq.m. with a popu lation of 7 millions. In 1899 the monsoon again failed in Gujarat, where famine hitherto had been almost unknown; and the winter rains failed in the Deccan, so that distress gradually spread over almost the entire presidency. The worst feature was a virulent outbreak of cholera in Gujarat, especially in the native states. The Bombay government exhausted its balances in 1897, and was subsequently dependent on grants from the government of India. The financial condition has so far improved that the presidency annually makes grants to the Central Government.
In 1932 Aden, previously a political part of the presidency, became a separate province under a Chief Commissioner responsi ble to the Indian Government.