CENTRAL INDIA is the d esignation for a geographical and political division of British India. It is a table-land of uneven surface, from 1500 to 2500 feet above the sea, bounded by the Aravalli mountains on the west, by those of the Vindhya on the south, supported on the east by a lower range in Bundelkhand, and sloping gradually on the north-east into the basin of the Ganges. It is a diversified but fertile tract. The Patar or plateau is about 700 miles long. Its breadth very various, greatest from Amjherra to Ajmir, 250 miles ; from Mhow to Mokundurra, 150 miles ; at Saugor and Dumoh, 75 miles ; afterwards very narrow. It is highest towards S. and W.; average of Udaipur, 2000 feet ; Malwa, 1500 to 2000 ; Bhopal, 2000 ; Bundelkhand, about 1000; Shahabad, 700; plain of Ajmir, 2000; Udaipur town, 24° 37', 73° 49', 2064. It slopes to N.E., the Banas river flowing in that direction ; gradual fall also to the valley of the Chambal river, where it rises to Malwa ; Mhow, 2019 feet ; Dhar, 1908; Indere, 1998; crest of Jaum ghat, 2328; Ujjain, 1698; Adjygurh, 1340; Amjherra, 1890; Sanger, 1940; Rhotasgurh, 700 ; Sonar river, at source, 1900. From the Viudhya range the surface has a generally gradual but in some places abrupt descent, as at Mokundurra and the Bindyachal hills, where the rivers occasionally fall over the brow in cascades. Shahabad district is very rocky and uneven.
This region is ruled by about 131 princes and chiefs,—Rajput, Bhil, Mahomedan, Mahratta, and Brahman,—over subject races of non-Aryan, Seythic, Aryan, Arab, Afghan, and Persian and Moghul descent, over Hindus, Baghel, Bhil, Gond, Jat, Koli, Mair, Mena, Rajput, and cultivating tribes of Kunbi, Kurmi, and Mali. Their political relations with British India are superintended by the Central Indian Agency stationed at Indore, with subordinate agencies for Baglielkhand, the Bhil, Bhopal, Guna, Gwalior, Indore, and Western Malwa. The states and chiefships in Central India form a political, and are in a natural, division of l3ritish India, and include an area of 83,600 square miles, and a population of about eight millions.
The people of Rewa are indolent and tmtrust worthy, and they and the country generally are certainly far less civilised than the neighbouring state and people of Bundelkhand. The country and people vary greatly in their character. Nothing can be a greater contrast than the desolate wilds and jungles of theWestern Satpura hills and parts of the country extending from them to the Vindhya, with their savage inhabitants, the Bhil _ tribes, who abhor field, or indeed any other manual labour, and the adjoining richly cultivated plains of Malwa, extending, with occa sional intervening tracts of hill and jungle, from the Mhye on the west to Bhilsa on the east, a stretch of close on 200 miles, and from the crest of the line of the Vindhya to Mundissore and Oomutwarra, a distance of from 100 to 120 miles, and populated by a thrifty agricultural people.
This is succeeded by the more hilly and jungly land of Oomutwarra, Seronje, and Keechiwarra, with their scanty population. North wards towards Gwalior, the country becomes more open, except on the wild border tracts of Kotah of Bundel khand, 'till we come to the carefully cultivated plain of Gwalior, stretching for a distance of 140 miles between the Chambal, Pahooj, and Sind rivers. A vast portion of Bundelkhand is hilly and unproductive, forming the northern slope of the table-land•of the Vindhya, but the scenery is strikingly grand (Ann. Ind. Adm. xi. p. 341). Raja Rama, Baghel, protected Humayun's wife, mother of the emperor Akbar. The Baghel are of the Solunki rajput race. The four Agnikula, or fire born Rajput tribes, the Chauhan, Solunki, Powar or Pramar, and the Puriliar, are now mainly found in the tract from Ujjain to Rewa, near Benares. And Mount Abu is asserted to have been the place of their miraculous birth or appearance.
Though widely different in other respects, there is one characteristic common to the Baghel of Rewa, the Bundela of Bundelkhand, and the Rajput of Gwalior and Malwa,—a dislike to labour or service away from their homes, so that they do not generally take an active part in the business of tilling 'the soil, such being, as a rule, left to servile classes. They are throughout the territory generally regarded as the local heads of society or of the village communities to which they belong, and many of them possess much influence amongst those around them as the representatives of the ancient families of the respective clans. In Malwa the principal trade marts are Indore, Bhopal, Ujjain, Mundissore, Rutlam, Dhar, Jowra, Augur, N much, S hoojawulpur, and Bhilsa. chiefly is sold in Rewa ; its chief is of the Baghel race. Tin and copper are found in Udaipur. Treaties, Engagements, and Sunnuds ; Tod's Rajas than ; Pioneer; Ann. Ind. Adm. xi. pp. 312, 353.