Khairagarh

Khairagarh's chiefs originally held the small forest tract of Khulwa below the Saletekri range. Their later territory grew through grants, claims and participation in regional conflicts. The resulting estate contained separate sections, with wooded uplands in the west and cultivated black-soil plains farther east. It was assembled from places with different political histories.

At the end of the eighteenth century, Khamaria was taken from Kawardha in settlement of a small loan. Other Khairagarh lands came from the rulers of Mandla. The chiefs also joined Nandgaon in suppressing a landholder who had rebelled against the Marathas; the defeated estate of Dongargarh was divided between the two allies. A nineteenth-century gazetteer records further grants in 1818 from Mandla princes and the Maratha rulers of Nagpur. These episodes place Khairagarh within a landscape of smaller chiefs negotiating with larger powers. Its authority grew through specific acquisitions, while the territory retained the fragmented form created by those transactions.