( 4 ) 



12. The rains last usually from the middle of June to the early part of October, and 

 there are occasional showers in the cold weather. Night frost is frequent in December 

 and January. On the whole, the climate of the Division may be characterised as moderate 

 and healthy. 



ARTICLE 5. Agricultural Customs and Wants of the Population. 



13. The population is essentially agricultural and mainly of Aryan stock, but within 

 and in the immediate neighbourhood of the forests aboriginal races, chiefly Gonds, are 

 largely represented and in some villages predominate. 



14. More than two-thirds of the district consisting of hilly country covered with 

 foreit where only a bare subsistence can be earned by the cultivation here and there of 

 inferior crops, the inhabitants are generally poor and their dwellings consequently roughly 

 constructed and of simple design. Owing to the excellent building material afforded by 

 the Vindhyan sandstone almost everywhere available, all dwellings, except those of the 

 poorest classes of inhabitants, are constructed of stone. They may be classified under three 

 main types as follows (1) those belonging to landlords in the rich alluvial tracts and to 

 members of the trading and literary classes ; (2) those inhabited by landlords in the poor 

 upland regions, artisans and petty cultivators ; and (3) those occupied by aboriginals and the 

 poorest classes of people. 



15. The first type consists of a main, often two-storied block, forming one side of a 

 quadrangle, the other three sides being closed in by living rooms, granaries and stabling. 

 The walls are of masonry, built up inside a timber frame-work and the front of the building 

 often consists of an open verandah supported on carved teak posts. The entrance to the 

 courtyard is through the front block and is closed with massive iron-bound wooden doors. 

 The building is roofed with tiles laid on split bamboos resting on sawn rafters. The woods 

 used are principally teak, saj, jamun and haldu. This type is entirely confined to the small 

 towns and largest and most prosperous villages. 



16. The second type of house is never two-storied and the masonry walls have 

 little or no timber frame-work. As before, the .main block frequently forms one side 

 of a quadrangle, the other three sides consisting of an enclosing wall in which is the small 

 door giving access to the courtyard. Occasionally a few sheds are erected for stabling on 

 one or more sides of the quadrangle, but more frequently the cattle are kept in the court- 

 yard. The latter is also in many cases enclosed by a simple dead-thorn fence or a stout 

 wooden railing. Every house has a gaily painted open verandah supported on wooden posts 

 and generally has a small garden attached. The building is roofed with tiles laid on split 

 bamboos resting on round rafters. Teak is not often used in these houses. 



17. In the third type stone is very rarely used and the walls consist of wattling plaster- 

 ed over with a mixture of mud and cowdung. Inside the walls stout forked posts are fixed at 

 intervals of about 6 feet and on these rest the long poles supporting the roof. The roof con- 

 sists occasionally of tiles, but more frequently of thatch and is laid over sih aru or ningori 

 branches spread flat over a light trellis of bamboos or of small wood of inferior species, which 

 is supported by round rafters. The wood used is almost invariably of inferior species, 

 dhawa being most frequently employed. 



18. The produce thus required by the agricultural population consists chiefly of small 

 timber for building purposes, wood and thorns for fencing the cattle pens and threshing- 

 floors, small wood and bamboos for the shelters and machans required byjthe villagers deputed 

 to watch the crops, grass for thatching, chheula root for the fibre universally employed for all 

 purposes instead of rope or string, wood for carts and agricultural implements, the most import- 

 ant of the latter being the narri or combined plough and drill and the bakkhar or bullock-hoe. 



19. The forests of this Division have always been favourite grazing grounds, both for 

 the cattle of the villages of the district and of those situated in the havelis of the adjoining 

 districts of Jubbulpore, Narsinghpur and Saugor. Cattle belonging to villages surrounded 

 by or adjoining Government forest resort to it daily throughout the year. The inhabitants 

 of the more distant haveli villages send their cattle to the villages in the upland forest tracts 

 to graze at the commencement of the rains, the graziers taking up their abode either in the 

 immediate vicinity of a village or in the forest itself. They erect temporary shelters for 

 themselves and the enclosures constructed for the cattle are termed khonras. Several culti- 

 vators frequently accompany these herds and they sow and reap a kharif crop in the villages 

 where they have taken up their temporary residence. When water gets scarce in the dry 

 hilly tracts towards the end of October or beginning of November these herds are taken back 

 to their villages in the haveli. 



20. At the time of harvesting the kharif and rabi crops the inhabitants of the hilly 

 forest tracts flock to the neighbouring haveli, to obtain a store of grain as wages for their 

 labour in the fields. This, added to the produce of their own scanty crops, forms their annual 

 supply of food-grain, which, eked out with mahua, achar, tendu and other edible forest pro- 

 ducts, affords them sustenance throughout the year. 



21. A considerable proportion of the labouring population find employment during 

 certain periods of the year, when no agricultural operations are in progress, in cutting and 



