CHANDA. The southernmost District of the Central Prov inces of British India.
Chanda Town is the old capital of an ancient Gond dynasty, situated near the confluence of the Erai and Wardha rivers. It once had a much larger population for there are now waste and cultivated fields inside the stone walls, which have a circumference of five and a half miles, whilst the modern suburbs of the town have grown up outside the city walls, and in the jungles which hem in the city on two sides there are many traces of old habi tations. The town is noted for its silk woven fabrics, ornamental slippers and other minor industries of the same kind. Outside one of the gates is held an annual fair attended by ioo,000 people. After a great decline from its ancient status as a Gond capital, it has begun to revive with the -construction of roads and railway communications, and its population is now 23,00o as compared with 16,00o in 1872.
District of Chanda.—The District of Chanda is one of the larg est districts in the Central Provinces, having an area of 9,312 sq.m., but the twenty Zamindari estates which it contains account for 4,000 sq.m. of wild and thinly populated country, while Government Forest Reserves cover no less than 2,700 sq.m., and include valuable teak and other timber, and large bamboo jungles. Coal of a poor quality is found in the extreme west at Ballarpur and Ghugus, while iron ore of high grade is found in the eastern part of the District. Except in the north-west and on the borders of the Wardha and Nagpur Districts, where cotton and wheat are both grown and there are large areas under juar (sorghum), rice and the small millets are the principal crops. Numbers of irriga tion tanks have been constructed by the people to water rice and sugar-cane, to which the Government has added a number of storage reservoirs of some magnitude. Many useful roads have been made since the great famines, and Chanda town is now con nected with Wardha on the G.I.P. railway via Warora (where the colliery is now worked out), and by narrow gauge lines with Nag pur and Gondia in the Bhandara district.
It is a most picturesque part of the country, with varied scenery, wooded hills and interesting archaeological remains, old temples and forts, notably at Chanda itself, Bhandak, Markandi and Wairagarh, but the climate is unpleasantly hot, the forests malarious, and the people unprogressive. Several languages are spoken. The Marathi of the north-west gives way to Telugu in the south and to Hindi (Chhattisgarhi) in the north-east. In all the wilder tracts aboriginal races predominate, and Gondi and other tribal dialects are common, as in the neighbouring Bastar State. The total population of the district in 1921 was 660,630. In the famine decade (1891-1901) there was a sharp decrease, and a set back in the decade 1911-1921 due to influenza, but in the last fifty years the growth of population has, nevertheless, been 3o%. Mohammedans number only Ii,000. In literacy Chanda is very backward, less than 20,000 (or 3%) being literate. Only 1,600 persons are literate in English.
