12 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA. 



the Ganges. The mountain of Kail as, the fabled heaven of 

 Siva beyond the snows of the Himalaya, jutted to heaven in 

 the peaks of the Mahadeo range. Krishna and Eama passed 

 their miraculous boyhood, and achieved their legendary feats, 

 in these central forests, instead of in the groves of Matlrdra 

 and the wilderness of Bindraban. Some remarks will be 

 offered in another place on the social and religious influence 

 of this contact with Hinduism of the aboriginal races who 

 retired before the invaders. A few remained in the country 

 occupied by the Hindiis, chiefly in the position of agricultural 

 serfs, of watchers of the villages against the inroads of their 

 wilder brethren or of wild beasts, of hewers of wood, pre- 

 vented only by the rules of caste from being also their 

 drawers of water. A social status was assigned them below 

 that of all but the outcasts of the other race ; and they were 

 compelled to segregate themselves in humble hovels, beyond 

 the limits of the comfortable houses and homesteads of the 

 superior castes. 



The semi-aboriginal principalities of Mandla Deogarh, and 

 Kherla, which included the whole of this highland region, 

 were thus permitted by the policy of successive Mahomedan 

 rulers to maintain a little irksome feudatory position, until 

 the Maratha power began to supplant that of the Moghuls in 

 the latter part of the 18th century. Then the irrepressible 

 hordes of the Deccan, having swallowed up the more settled 

 dominions of the Moslem, began to overrun also the country 

 of the G6nds. Before the close of the century the three 

 kingdoms had been entirely broken up, and are heard of no 

 more in history. They seem to have at no time been more 

 than a feudal agglomeration of numerous petty chiefships ; 

 and on the ruin of their heads they resolved themselves again 

 into the same elements. The conquest of the Marathas 



