32 The Ethnoloyy of India. 
occupy a broad tract east and west wherever the country is jungly or 
hilly, but becoming more and more civilised and more dominant over 
others as we go northwards. The valley of Sumbhulpore may be 
taken as for the most part marking the division between the Gond 
country on one side, and that of the Aborigines of northern stock 
on the other. 
On the east the Gonds, under the name of Gours, extend into the 
borders of the Chota-Nagpore agency in Oodeypore and Sirgoojah, 
but they are there much Hinduised and have lost their language. The 
Raja of Sirgoojah, though pretending to be a Rajpoot, is suspected to 
be a Gour; at any rate the Gours are there the dominant tribe. 
Thence westward along the line of the Sautpoora hills, through all the 
hilly country of the districts of Mandla, Jubbulpore, Seonee, Chand- 
wara, Baitool and Hoshangabad, in fact in some degree to the neigh- 
bourhood of Asseerghur, the Gonds predominate. In the wilder parts, 
they speak their own Aboriginal language, and seem there to be a 
simple and not intractable people, following both pastoral and agricul- 
tural pursuits. In the older maps, the name Gondwana is given to a 
wider tract of country in this part of Central India, being that which 
was in modern times rather politically than ethnologically Gond. 
The Gonds (in a somewhat civilised form) were in fact for some time 
masters of all this part of the country, including the open and culti- 
vated tracts about Nagpore, Raepore, Jubbulpore, &c. and perhaps as 
far as Ellichpore on the one hand, and on the other to the south of the 
Godayery, where some of them are found among the ordinary Telinga 
population. Deogurh in the Sautpooras was the chief seat of their 
power. They immediately preceded the Marattas. These latter 
ousted them from the open and valuable tracts, and they do not now 
- form any considerable part of the population of the plain country, but 
they maintained a feudal dominion in much of the hilly country ; and 
to this day not only the chiefs and large zemindars of the Sautpoora 
range, but most of the men of considerable position in parts of Saugor 
and other districts north of the Nerbudda are, I understand, Gonds, 
diluted or improved Gonds as the case may be, (most of them wish to 
become Rajpoots, and others have become Mussulmans), but still Gonds. 
Following up the Dravidian tribes, we next come to the Oraons, now 
located in the midst of Kolarian tribes and much mixed up with 
