In the Central Provinces the Gonds occupy two main tracts. The first
is the wide belt of broken hill and forest country in the centre of
the Province, which forms the Satpura plateau, and is mainly comprised
in the Chhindwara, Betul, Seoni and Mandla Districts, with portions
of several others adjoining them. And the second is the still wider
and more inaccessible mass of hill ranges extending south of the
Chhattisgarh plain, and south-west down to the Godavari, which includes
portions of the three Chhattisgarh Districts, the Bastar and Kanker
States, and a great part of Chanda. In Mandla the Gonds form nearly
half the population, and in Bastar about two-thirds. There is, however,
no District or State of the Province which does not contain some Gonds,
and it is both on account of their numbers and the fact that Gond
dynasties possessed a great part of its area that the territory of the
Central Provinces was formerly known as Gondwana, or the country of
the Gonds. [37] The existing importance of the Central Provinces dates
from recent years, for so late as 1853 it was stated before the Royal
Asiatic Society that "at present the Gondwana highlands and jungles
comprise such a large tract of unexplored country that they form quite
an oasis in our maps." So much of this lately unexplored country as
is British territory is now fairly well served by railways, traversed
almost throughout by good roads, and provided with village schools
at distances of five to ten miles apart, even in the wilder tracts.