Jabalpur

Jabalpur is a city in Madhya Pradesh state of India. Jabalpur is the administrative seat of Jabalpur District and Jabalpur Division. The city is considered to be a sanskardhani. The numerous gorges in the neighboring rocks have been taken advantage of to surround the city with a series of lakes, which, shaded by fine trees and bordered by fantastic crags, add much beauty to the suburbs. The city itself dates from the nineteenth century, and is laid out in wide and regular streets. It has a beautiful collection of marble rocks called bhera-ghat surrounding the holy Narmada River. Many visitors every year come to visit Jabalpur because of this major attraction. Jabalpur is an important junction for the Indian Railways.

The city is also considered to be a base for higher education. It has some of the best known colleges of Madhya Pradesh. Every year around 300 highly qualified engineers and doctors finish their graduation from the renowned colleges here.

Jabalpur also has a big Defence and Military Center, the headquarters of West Central Railway Zone, the Madhya Pradesh State Electricity Board, and the Madhya Pradesh High Courts. It is also known for giving to the world, philosophers like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi of Transcendental Meditation fame and Bhagwaan Rajneesh (Osho).

Jabalpur District

Area 10,160 sq. km., population 2,167,469 (2001 census). Jabalpur district lies on the divide between the watersheds of Narmada and the Son, but mostly within the valley of the Narmada, which here runs through the famous gorge known as the Marble rocks, and falls 30 ft. over a rocky ledge (the Dhuan dhar, or misty shoot ). It consists of a long narrow plain running north-east and south-west, and shut in on all sides by highlands. This plain, which forms an offshoot from the great valley of the Narmada, is covered in its western and southern portions by a rich alluvial deposit of black cotton-soil. At Jabalpur city the soil is sandy, and water plentiful near the surface. The north and east belong to basin of the Son River, a tributary of the Ganges and Yamuna, the south and west to the Narmada basin. The district is traversed by the main railway from Bombay to Calcutta, and by branches of two other lines which meet at Katni junction.

Jabalpur Division

The Jabalpur division includes the districts of Balaghat, Chhindwara, Dindori, Jabalpur, Katni, Mandla, Narsinghpur, and Seoni.

The former British Jubbulpore Division of the Central Provinces comprised the districts of Damoh, Jubbulpore, Mandla, Saugor (Sagar), and Seoni.

History

The early history of Jabalpur is unknown; but inscriptions record the existence during the 11th and 12th centuries of a local line of princes of that Haihai race which is closely connected with the history of Gondwana. In the 16th century the Gond raja of Garha Mandla extended his power over fifty-two districts, including the present Jabalpur. During the minority of his grandson, Asaf Khan, the viceroy of Kara Maoikpur, conquered the Garha principality and held it at first as an independent chief. Eventually he submitted to the Mughal emperor Akbar. The Mughal Empire, however, enjoyed little more than a nominal supremacy; and the princes of Garha Mandla maintained a practical independence until their subjugation by the Maratha governors of Sagar in 1781. In 1798 the peshwa granted the Narmada valley to the Bhonsle princes of Nagpur, who continued to hold the district until the British occupied it in 1818.

Under the British Raj, Jabalpur became the capital of the Saugor and Nerbudda territories, which was part of the British North-western Province. The North-western Province later became part of the Central Provinces which, in 1903, became the Central Provinces and Berar. By the early 20th Century Jabalpur was the headquarters of a brigade in the 5th division of the Southern Army.

After India's independence in 1947, the Central Provinces and Berar became the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.

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