INTRODUCTORY. 15 



described as " savage and intractable." Since they first came 

 under our rule there has not been an outbreak among them 

 of the least importance ; and, on the contrary, they have long 

 since gained the character of being a remarkably submissive 

 and law-abiding people. The chiefs were early secured in 

 their feudatory position, with the full proprietorship of such 

 territories, both in the hills and in the plains, as they could 

 establish a title to ; and for many years they were left almost 

 to themselves in the management of their internal affairs. Our 

 early administrators were too fully occupied with the work of 

 restoring prosperity in the open country to have much time 

 to spare for the Gond and his wildernesses ; and thus we find 

 that the interior of their country remained an almost unex- 

 plored mystery up to a very recent period. 



Two and a half centuries ago the great Akber knew nothing 

 of the G6nds but as a " people who tame lions so as to make 

 them do anything they please, and about whom many won- 

 derful stories are told;"* and within the last twenty years 

 even they have been described as going naked, or clothed 

 in leaves, living in trees, and practising cannibalism. "So 

 lately as 1853, when the great trigonometrical survey of India 

 had been at work for half a century, and the more detailed 

 surveys for some thirty years, Sir Erskine Perry, addressing 

 the Bombay branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, wrote, 

 'At present the Gond wand highlands and jungles comprise 

 such a large tract of unexplored country that they form quite 

 an oasis in our maps. Captain Blunt's interesting journey in 

 1795, from Benares to Rajamandri, gives us almost all the 

 information we possess of many parts of the interior.' " | Till 



* Gladwin's ' Ayeen Akberee,' vol. ii. p. 59. 



t 'Introduction to the Central Provinces Gazetteer,' by Charles Grant, 

 Esq., C.S. 



