CHUTIA NAGPUR, or Chota Nagpore, is a pro vince in Bengal and the Central Provinces, lying between lat. 21° 58' 30" and 24° 48' N., and long. 83° 22' and 87° 15' E., with an area of 43,901 square miles, and a population in 1872 of 3,825,571 souls, two-thirds of them professing Hinduism, and upwards of a million following aboriginal faiths. The Kolarian and Dra,vidian aboriginal tribes number 230,031, the senii-Hinduized abori gines 101,849, and Hindus 71,749. Chutia Nag pur is on the eastern part of the extensive plateau of Central India, on which the Koel, the Subunreka, the Damuda, and other rivers have their sources. It extends into Sirguja, and forms what is called the Upar-ghat or Highland of Jashpur ; and it is connected by a continuous chain of hills with the Vindhya and Kymor rano-es, from which flow affluents of the Ganges, adwith the highlands of Amarkantak, on which are the sources of the Narbadda. 'The plateau is on the average, about 3000 feet above the level of the sea, with an area of about 7000 square miles. It is on all sides difficult of access; is a well wooded, undulating country, diversified by ranges of hills, and it has a genial clitnate. The non-Aryan tribes bad fallen back to that refuge from the plains, more than half of them, however, being of the race known to Europeans as Kol ; the other races in Chutia Nagpur and its adjoining tracts are the Larka Kol, Ho, Bhumi, Mundah, and Santal, The Kol in former times possessed the whole of Chutia Nagpur, which may now be said to be divided between them and the Dhangar or Oraon, who came from Rotasghur, The chief men in most' of the villages are still, however, of the old Mundah or Kol tribe, and they do not intertnarry with the Dhangar 'or Oraon. The greater part of Sing
bhum is inhabited by Kol,- and they are numerous in Bamanghotty,',pd dispersed to the vicinities of Cuttack (Katak) Midnapur. r They" are in' a confused mass of . fat,-,topped -hills called pat,' capped with a •horizon't4 layer of trap. It' is arranged, for revenue and administrative purposes; into the districts of Hazariba‘gh, Lohardaga, Sing bhum, Manbhum,: and the seven small tributary states designated -.the Chutia Nagpur mahals 41,re Bonai, Chang &that', Gangpur, ,.1ftsitpur, 'Korea,' Sirguja, and Udaipur. The 'chiefs are tributary. The races have a strong belief in witcheraft.--: Imp. Goz.; .Dalton's Ethnology.