Gond

The Gond, who call themselves Koitur, are a Dravidian tribal people of the forested Gondwana hills in central India, speaking Gondi, a Dravidian tongue related to Telugu; outsiders named them from kond, the Dravidian word for hill. Between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries they built a ring of kingdoms there.

Chanda, the first, was founded around 1200 and grew strong through irrigation and fortified towns, later moving its capital to Chandrapur; Garha followed in the fourteenth century as Jadurai overthrew its Kalachuri lords. Garha-Mandla's queen, Rani Durgavati, died fighting the emperor Akbar in 1564, while the Deogarh raja Bakht Buland Shah converted to Islam to win Aurangzeb's favour and founded Nagpur.

Rajas survived as Mughal tributaries until Maratha armies overran them in the 1740s; after the Third Anglo-Maratha War the British took the remaining estates. Gond society is ordered into clans served by Pardhan bard-genealogists, with a nature faith under the high god Kupar Lingo and an oral Ramayana.