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 CHAPTER VII

Nágpur. The Karnatic Family. Náná Sáhib Berár

By far the largest accession of territory made during Lord Dalhousie's rule, to the British dominions on the failure of heirs, was the great central tract of India known as Nágpur, This Maráthá principality as now constituted into the Central Provinces, and after various rectifications of frontier, has an area of 113,279 square miles with a population of twelve million souls. The territories annexed by Lord Dalhousie in 1854 make nearly four-fifths of the present Central Provinces.

Their wide-spreading mountains, forests, and plains, had been the seat of powerful dynasties of the aboriginal races, which were crushed by the Maráthás in the last century. The years that followed the final overthrow of the native Gond Rajas by the Maráthás, in 1781, were years of terrible suffering in the Central Provinces. The Maráthás so harried and oppressed the people that the sole refuge of the husbandman was flight. The