are knocked out and the head is shaved. The extraction of the teeth is said in Bastar to be effected with the idea of preventing the witch from muttering charms, but in Ku má on the object of the operation is rather to prevent her from doing mischief under the form of a tiger, which is the Indian equivalent of the loupgarou.* The shaving of the head is attributed by an acute observer to the notion of power residing in the hair, and it seems clear, from the recorded instances, that it is done rather as an antidote against future evil than merely as a punishment to the offender.† Sometimes the suspected persons escape these trials, accompanied as they are by abuse, exposure, and confinement, with life, and then they are driven out of the village. But often the tests are too severe for them, or the fury of the villagers is so roused by the spectacle that they kill their victims outright. The crime is not yet quite extinct, but it has been much checked of late years by the expedient of executing the murderers on the scene of their misdeeds. To quote again from the paper already mentioned-" There is at "this moment no logical method whatever of demonstrating to a mál"guzár of Ráíp úr that witchcraft is nothing but a delusion and "an imposition. Your only chance would be the proving that such things are contrary to experience; but unluckily they are by no "means contrary to every-day experience in R áíp úr, and the facts "are positively asserted and attested; wherefore we are reduced "to abandon logic altogether, and to give out boldly that any one "who kills a witch shall be most illogically hanged-a very prac"tical and convincing line of argument."‡ 66 Prevalent Hindú castes. To sum up. The Hindú castes most largely represented in the Central Provinces' population are, from the north-Bráhmans, Rájputs, A hírs (herdsmen), Lodhís and Kurmís (cultivators), and Chamárs; from the south and west-Brahmans, and Kunbís. p. 54. * "Witchcraft in the Central Provinces," by Mr. A. C. Lyall, in "Once in a Way," Telís (oil-pressers), Kaláls (distillers), Dhímars (fishermen and bearers), Málís (gardeners), and Dhers (outcastes), are also numerous throughout the province, but have taken in each part of it the impress of the dominant race, speaking Marátháin Nágpúr and Hindí in the Narbadá country. Of Mohammadans there are only 237,962 altogether (not three per cent of the population), and many of these of a very hybrid sort. CHAPTER VII. ADMINISTRATION AND TRADE. Ethnical subdivisions-Formation of the Central Provinces--First measures of administration-Non-regulation system-General and Judicial administrative staff-District duties-The revenue-Land revenue-Land Tenure-Salt and Sugar tax-ExciseStamps and assessed taxes-Forest revenues-Miscellaneous receipts-EducationHigher education-Sanitation and Vaccination-Dispensaries-Jails-Local funds and operations-The Engineering Department-Communications-Trade-Exports, Cotton-Native cloth trade-Grain trade-Remaining articles of export-Imports, Salt-Sugar-Piece-goods and other articles of import-Conclusion. The preceding brief notice of the population of the Central Provinces shows that though it was originally, so far as we know, homogeneous, or at least that one race-the Gon d--predominated sufficiently to give a name and distinctive character to the country, yet in subsequent times the aboriginal stratum has been so overlaid by foreign accessions from the four quarters of the compass, that the country is now split up into subdivisions, ethnically connected Ethnical subdivisions. with entirely different provinces of India. Thus Ságar and Damoh on the Vindhyan plateau somewhat resemble Bundelkhand. The Narbadá valley population, though more localised and individualised, has similar affinities. The Nág púr country is a bastard of the Maráthá family. Sironc há and parts of Chándá come within the outskirts of Telingana. Sambalpúr leans to Orissa. Nimár and Chhattisgarh, especially the latter, are exceptions, each possessing a dialect and characteristics peculiar to itself. After the Bhonslá kingdom was broken up, the experiment was tried of attaching these disjecta membra of different nationalities to their parent stocks. The northern provinces were first administered by a semi-political agency, but were afterwards added to the Lieutenant-Governorship of the North-Western Provinces. Nimár was administered directly from Indore, the nearest seat of British power, and indirectly from A'gra. Sa mbalpúr was included among the non-regulation districts of the Bengal Province. Nágpúr only retained a Government of its own, the Resident being transformed into a Commissioner until better arrangements could be made. Chhattisgarh was a kind of no-man's-land, but as it was not easily accessible from any side but the west, considerations of administrative convenience prevailed, and it remained attached to the Bhonslá capital. None of these dispositions worked quite successfully. The Ságar and Narbadá territories were never really amalgamated with the NorthWestern Provinces, from which they are separated by a vast intervening tract of independent country. They had an administrative staff, codes, and procedure of their own, and owing to their dis tance from the seat of Government, and the difference, in many important respects, of their physical and moral characteristics from those on which the experience of the North-Western administration had been founded, the orders of the Government often failed to to strike home, and the province became practically an outlying dependency, in which external authority was rather felt as a check than as a stimulus. Nimár was in much the same case, while the wild chiefships attached to Sambalpúr were always hot-beds of disorder. Thus Gondwána had been lopped of its extremities and resolved into two provinces; neither of them large enough to ensure the healthy circulation of ideas and the emulation among the official staff, which are indispensable to administrative success. The nominal supervision of distant authorities had proved as must always be the case where a poor, distant, and unattractive dependency is added to the charge of an old Government, fully occupied with the established routine of its more important and immediate interests-quite inadequate to put spirit into the administration, or to throw clear light on the real wants of the country and the people. Abandoning therefore the Provinces. experiment which had indeed originated rather accidentally, in consequence of the gradual disintegration of the Bhonsla kingdom, than in any set design of separating the Hindi and Maráthá elements of Gond wána--Lord Canning decided, in NovemFormation of the Central ber 1861, to reunite British Central India under one strong Government. It fell to the lot of Sir Richard (then Mr.) Temple to write the first official account of the new territories, and newspaper readers of that time (1861-62) must still remember the curiosity with which it was awaited, and the interest with which it was perused, not only on account of the high reputation of the writer, but owing to the novelty of the subject which he treated. There was a famous lake at Ságar; Jabalpur produced Thug informers, tents, and carpets; Nág púr had been the capital of one of the great Marát há kingdoms, and the country generally was inhabited by Gonds (spelt " Gooands"), whom some supposed to be "a low caste of Hindús," others, to be men of the woods, who lived in trees and kidnapped travellers to sacrifice them to their gods;--these were the main heads of the popular information about Gondwána. Sir Richard Temple was able, in less than a year, to give an account of the province, its people, its history, and its wants, which subsequent research has supplemented, but has not altered or improved in any important particular. In his first two seasons he penetrated into almost every corner of a province larger than Great Britain, and with scarcely a mile of made road, except that leading out of it, from Jabalpúr to Mirzápúr. The knowledge thus gained by inquiry and observation served to facilitate the still arduous work of freeing the administrative machine from time-honoured obstructions-already crumbling away, perhaps, under the influence of air and light from without, and of building up, almost from the commencement, a First measures of adminis- fresh and more perfect organism. The first year's list of measures comprises tration. *Among these judicial reform has not been mentioned, because, although perhaps the most important and difficult of all, it does not come under the class of creative measures. The complete and rapid reorganisation of the Courts effected by Mr. John Strachey, was, however, as great a boon as could possibly have been conferred on a law-loving people. thirty-nine headings, among which-putting aside departments already in full working, which only needed stimulation-may be counted the land-revenue settlement and record of agricultural rights; the introduction of State education (into the Nágpúr province); the construction of trunk roads; the repression of drunkenness by the introduction of the Central distillery system ; the levy of a local cess to support village-schools; the organisation of a regular constabulary; the creation of an honorary magistracy; the introduction of jail discipline, and the erection of suitable jail buildings; the preservation of forests; the improved preparation of cotton for the English market; the extension of irrigation; the establishment of mercantile fairs; the suppression of forced labour; and the collection of reliable statistics of population, trade, and agriculture. In some of these respects a commencement had been made, especially in the Ságar and Narbadá territories, but in all there was much severe up-hill work required to bring the Central Provinces up to the level of other parts of India. Thus, although preliminary settlement operations had for years dragged their slow length along, no single assessment had been announced, and while the Government was losing the benefit of the general enhancement which has since taken place, the people were in places suffering from the pressure of the demand. In the Nágp úr province the prisons were "temporary makeshifts of the worst description."* State education had been commenced in about a third of the province, but the scheme comprised no regular village-schools, while in the remaining districts there was no educational system at all. In short in the Ságar and Na rba dá territories much had to be done; in the Nágp úr province almost everything had to be done, and public opinion, for the first time called into council, demanded a rate of progress rapid in proportion to the deficiencies to be made up. The essential difficulties of forcing the progress-rate with a limited command of men, money, and time, were much enhanced in the Central Provinces by the characteristics of the country. The distances were great, *Administration Report of the Central Provinces (1861-62), p. 59. |