Chhattisgarhi

The Chhattisgarhi people inhabit the fertile upper Mahanadi basin of east-central India, a region known in ancient times as Dakshina Kosala and centred on Ratanpur and Raipur. Their language, Chhattisgarhi, is an Eastern Indo-Aryan tongue of the Eastern Hindi group, written in Devanagari and closely related to Hindi.

In the early medieval period Dakshina Kosala was ruled from Sirpur by the Sharabhpuriya and Panduvamshi dynasties, and from the early eleventh century by the Kalachuris of Ratnapura, whose successors ruled as the Haihaiyavanshi kings. Holding the country for roughly seven hundred years, the dynasty split into Ratanpur and Raipur branches in the fourteenth century and later acknowledged Mughal overlordship.

Maratha armies invaded in 1740, and in 1758 the Bhonsles of Nagpur annexed the kingdom. The name Chhattisgarh, traditionally explained as the land of thirty-six forts, first appeared in an official document under Maratha rule in 1795.