Dhamtari

Dhamtari lies on the fertile Chhattisgarh plain near the upper Mahanadi. The river rises in the Sihawa hills to the southeast and flows eastward toward the Bay of Bengal. Rice is the principal crop of the surrounding country, watered by the Mahanadi and its tributaries. Dhamtari formed part of Dakshina Kosala and later of the territory ruled by the Kalachuri branch based at Raipur.

After the Kalachuri house of Ratanpur divided in the fourteenth century, its junior branch established a separate kingdom at Raipur. Inscriptions place Brahmadeva among the rulers of this country in the early fifteenth century. The Bhonsles of Nagpur displaced the last Raipur ruler in the mid-eighteenth century, and Dhamtari passed into the Maratha sphere before British intervention in 1818.