A History of the Mahrattas v1.c7.5

v1.c7.5

¹ The mountainous tract called Gondwaneh is inhabited by a savage race of people, who, as they are not Hindoos, are supposed never to have been conquered. [Gondwana (Gondwaneh) of historical times was roughly equivalent to the northern portion of the modern Central Provinces, including the Sātpurā plateau and a section of the Nāgpur plain and Narbadā valley to the south and west ; and was so called from the fact that Gond dynasties possessed the land between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries. (See note on Gonds, vol. ii, p. 68 post.) The name is also applied by geologists to the old continent which is supposed to have formerly connected India with Africa and which broke up about the time when the chalk was forming in Europe. Peninsular India, or the Deccan, in its widest signification, represents the remains of that assumed vanished continent, and is geologically quite distinct from the Indo-Gangetic plain and the Himalayan region. The rocks of which the Deccan is formed are among the oldest in the world, and show no trace of ever having been submerged, after a very early geological period. (See I.G., 1907, vol. i, p. 197.)]