---

Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 10, p. 329.

CHOTA Ar GPUR DIVISION 329 want of a better designation, for this tract of elevated country, and is not intended to imply that the area referred to forms an open table-land like that to the north of Cape Colony. There are three plateaux in the stricter acceptation of the term, one in Ranch! and two in Hazaribâgh. Elsewhere the country is often very broken, and numerous ranges or groups of steep hills are intersected by deep ravines and occasion ally by open valleys. The geological formation is gneiss, freely inter- bedded with micaceous, siliceous, and hornblendic schists, passing into transition or metamorphic rocks in West Bengal and South Bihar. The recorded population increased from 3,147,699 in 1872 to 4,225,989 m 1881 and to 4,628,792 in 1891 ; but the earlier enumera- tions were defective. The density is 181 persons per square mile, compared with 438 for Bengal as a whole. In igor Hindus constituted 68-5 per cent. of the total population, Muhanlmadans 5•7 per cent., Christians (of whom all except i,19i were natives) 2•9 per cent., and Animists 22-7 per cent., while among the remainder were 853 Jains. The Division is the home of numerous non-Aryan tribes, who were never properly subjugated either by the early Aryan invaders or by the Pathan and Mughal emperors, or indeed by any outside power until the advent of the British. They have thus preserved in their mountain fastnesses an individuality in respect of tribal organization, religion, and language which their congeners in the plains have long since lost. They are gradually abandoning their tribal dialects in favour of the nearest Aryan form of speech, Hindi to the north and west, Oriya to the south, and Bengali to the east ; but a large number still speak their own languages, which are divided by philologists into two great families, the Mundâ and the Dravidian. This distinction, however, is merely an indication of some earlier political condition, and does not represent any corresponding divergence of physical type. The most distinctive of the tribes represented are the Santâls (see SANTAL PARCANAS) in Hazâribagh, Mânbhűm, and Singhbhűm, the MUNll9S in Rânchi, the ORAONS in Rânchi and the Tributary States, the Hos in Singhbhűm, the Bxum1Js in Manbhűm and Singhbhűm, and the Gonds in the Tributary States. A remarkable increase in the number of Christians took place during the decade ending igoi, due principally to new conversions in Ranch-1, where Christians numbered 124,958, compared with only 75,693 ten years previously. The German Lutheran missionaries have here met with great success; and the District is also a great centre of Roman Catholic missionary enterprise, containing three-fifths of the total number of their converts in Bengal. The Division contains 13 towns and 23,876 villages. RKNCxi (25970) is the only town with a population exceeding 20,000 inhabi- tants. Chotâ Nâgpur possesses great mineral wealth, especially in respect of coal, the principal fields being the Giridih coal-field in