Bibliography.—The Antiquités mexicaines of Dupaix (Paris, 1834), the Voyage pittoresque et archéologique dans la province d’Yucatan of F. de Waldeck (Paris, 1838), and the Monuments anciens du Mexique of Brasseur de Bourbourg and Waldeck (Paris, 1866) are quite out of date and superseded. Stephen’s Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan (New York, 1841 and 1867), and B.M. Norman’s Rambles in Yucatan (New York, 1843), are still of value, the first-mentioned especially for the drawings by Catherwood. Among the earlier writers may also be mentioned Charnay, Les Anciennes Villes du Nouveau Monde (Paris, 1885) and Cités et ruines américaines (Paris, 1863), the latter written in collaboration with Viollet-le-Duc. Those, however, who are not primarily bibliophiles will be content to study the following:—Maudslay (in Godman and Salvin’s Biologia Centrali-Americana, sect. Archaeology, London, 1889, &c.), a pioneer work containing the admirably presented results of scientific exploration. Maler, in Memoirs of the Peabody Museum, vol. ii. 1, 2 (Cambridge, U.S.A., 1901 and 1903); Holmes, Archaeological Studies among the Ancient Mexicans (Field Columbian Museum, Chicago, 1895); E. Seler, Die alten Ansiedelungen von Chacula (Berlin, 1901), Wandmalereien von Mitla (Berlin, 1895), Ges. Abhandlungen, vol. i. (Berlin, 1902) and vol. ii. (1904), Fuhrer von Mitla (Berlin, 1906). E. Förstemann has contributed many valuable essays to Globus and the Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie (Berlin); especially important are his commentaries to the Dresden Codex (Dresden, 1901), to the Codex Tro-Cortesianus Madrilensis (Danzig, 1902), and to the Codex Peresianus (Danzig, 1903). See also “The Archaic Maya Inscriptions,” by F.T. Goodman (in Biologia Centrali-Americana, section Archaeology, viii., 1897), and Report of an Archaeological Tour in Mexico in 1881, by A.F. Bandelier (Boston, 1884). Valuable bibliographies have been made by Bandelier (Notes on the Bibliography of Yucatan and Central America, Worcester, U.S.A., 1881) and by K. Häbler (“Die Maya Literatur und der Maya Apparat zu Dresden,” in the Zentralblatt fur Bibliothekwesen, xii., 1895). The Mayan picture MSS. have been published in facsimile as follows:—the Dresden Codex by Förstemann (Leipzig, 1880, and Dresden, 1892), and the Codex Tro by Brasseur de Bourbourg—Manuscrit Troano, étude sur le système graphique et la langue des Mayas (Paris, 1869-1870), the Codex Cortesianus by Léon de Rosny (Paris, 1883) and by F. de Dios de la Rada y Delgado and F.L. de Ayala y del Hierro (Madrid, 1893), the Codex Peresianus by Duruy and Brasseur de Bourbourg (Paris, 1864) and by L. de Rosny (Paris, 1887). The following relate especially to the ruins in Salvador:—La Universidad, by D. Gonzalez, vol. ii. ser. 3, No. 6, p. 283 (San Salvador, 1892-1893); Le Salvador pré-Colombien, études archéologiques, by F. de Montcasus de Ballore (Paris, 1891), 25 plates; Karl Sapper in Arch. fur Ethnologie, 9, p. 3 ff. (1896).
(W. L.*)
CENTRAL FALLS, a city of Providence county, Rhode Island, U.S.A., on the Blackstone river, about 5 m. N. of Providence. Pop. (1900) 18,167; (1905, state census) 19,446, of whom 8792 were foreign-born, 4164 being French-Canadian, 1587 being English, and 1292 being Irish; (1910) 22,754. It is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway. The Blackstone furnishes good water-power, and the chief industry of the city is the manufacture of cotton goods; other important industries are the refining of copper and the manufacture of woollens, silks and hair-cloth. The total value of the factory product in 1905 was $5,090,984, being 12.9% more than in 1900. A settlement was established here about 1763 and was first a part of Smithfield, and then, after 1871, of Lincoln. About 1780 a chocolate mill was erected, and from then until 1827 the settlement was known as Chocolateville. It was incorporated as the Central Falls Fire District of Smithfield in 1847, and in 1895 was chartered as a city.
CENTRALIA, a city of Marion county, Illinois, U.S.A., in the S. part of the state, about 62 m. E. of St Louis. Pop. (1890) 4763; (1900) 6721 (571 foreign-born); (1910) 9680. The city is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Illinois Central, the Illinois Southern, and the Southern railways; the first two have repair shops here. Centralia is situated in the central part of southern Illinois, popularly known as “Egypt.” Among its manufactures are window glass, envelopes, cigars, concrete blocks and flour. In and near the city coal is mined, and apples, strawberries and other fruits are raised, and the city is a shipping point for coal and fruit. Centralia was first settled in 1853, and was first chartered as a city in 1859.
CENTRAL INDIA, a collection of native states in India forming a separate agency, which must not be confounded with the Central Provinces. The Central India agency was formed in 1854, when Sir R. Hamilton was appointed agent to the governor-general. It lies between 21° 24′ and 26° 52′ N. and between 74° 0′ and 83° 0′ E., and may be said to consist of two large detached tracts of country which, with Jhansi as a pivot, spread outwards east and west into the peninsula, reaching northward to within some 30 m. of Agra, and southward to the valley of the Nerbudda and the Vindhya and Satpura ranges. The total area is 78,772 sq. m. It is bounded on the N. and N.E. by the United Provinces, on the W. and S.W. by Rajputana, some native states of the Bombay presidency, and Khandesh. The Central Provinces and the Bengal district of Chota Nagpur enclose it on the S. and E., while the Jhansi district of the United Provinces separates the two tracts.
Central India may be divided into three great natural divisions: the highlands of the Malwa plateau, with a mean elevation of some 1500 ft. above sea-level; the low-lying country some 600 ft. above sea-level, comprising the greater part of the eastern section of the agency; and the hilly tracts, which lie mostly to the south. The Malwa plateau consists of great undulating plains, separated by flat-topped hills, whose sides are boldly terraced, with here and there a scarp rising above the general level; it is covered with long grass, stunted trees and scrub, which owing to the presence of deciduous plants is of a uniform straw colour, except in the rains. The foundation of this plateau is a bed of sandstone and shales belonging to the Vindhyan series. This bed, which stretches east and west from Sasseram to Neemuch, and north and south from Agra to Hoshangabad, comprises the whole of the agency except the northern part of Bundelkhand. On the plateau itself the sandstone is generally overlaid by the Deccan trap, a blackish-coloured basaltic rock of volcanic origin, the high level tableland having been formed by a succession of lava flows, the valleys of Central India being merely “denudation hollows” carved out by the action of rain and rivers. It is apparently the northern limit of what was once a vast basaltic plain stretching from Goona to Belgaum, “one of the most gigantic outpourings of volcanic matter in the world.” The sandstone bed on which it rests is visible at a point just north of Goona, and in a small area round Bhilsa and Bhopal, as it is in those places freed from the layer of trap. The low-lying land includes roughly that part of the agency which lies to the east of the plateau and comprises the greater part of the political divisions of Bundelkhand and Baghelkhand and the country round Gwalior. The formation save in north Bundelkhand is sandstone of the Vindhyan series, free as a rule from “trap.” In the north of Bundelkhand the prevailing rock is gneiss and quartz. The quartz takes the shape of long serrated ridges, which are in many places a characteristic feature of the landscape. Trap appears here and there in intrusive dykes. The hilly tracts lie chiefly to the south of the agency, where the Vindhya, Satpura and Kaimur ranges are met with. The country is rough forest and jungle land little used for cultivation. The greater part of Central India is covered with the well-known “black cotton soil,” produced by the disintegration of the trap rock. It is a very rich loamy earth, possessing great fertility and an unusual power of retaining moisture, which makes artificial irrigation little needed. Opium and millet are the principal crops grown upon it. The ordinary “red soil” covers a large part of northern Bundelkhand, and as it requires much irrigation, tanks are a special feature in this country. Ethnologically as well as climatically the differences between the plateau and the eastern part of the agency are distinct and the languages markedly so. The plateau is inhabited by pure-blooded Rajput races, whose ancestry can be traced back for centuries, with all their numerous offshoots. The inhabitants of the low-lying country are also Rajputs, but their descent is mixed and as a rule the families of the plateau will have no marriage connexion with them. The races of the hilly tracts are semi-civilized tribes, who often flee at the mere sight of a white man, and have as yet been but little affected by the Hindu religion of their Rajput rulers. Of the climate of the plateau, Abul Fazl, the author of the Ain-i-Akbari, says: “The climate is so temperate that in the winter there is no occasion for warm clothing, nor is it necessary in summer to cool the water with saltpetre. But in the four rainy months the night here is cold enough to render a quilt necessary.” The rains of the south-east monsoon reach Central India as a rule about the 12th of July, and last until the end of September.
Administrative Divisions.—The Central India agency is divided for administrative purposes into eight units, two classed as residencies and six as agencies. These are the residencies of Gwalior and Indore, and the agencies of Baghelkhand, Bhopal, Bhopawar, Bundelkhand, Indore and Malwa. But these divisions are purely an artificial grouping for the purposes of the British government, the original native divisions consisting of 16 states and 98 minor states and estates. The 15 large states are Gwalior, Indore, Rewa, Bhopal, Dhar, Barwani, Datia, Orchha, Charkhari, Chhattarpur, Panna, Dewas (senior branch), Dewas (junior branch), Jaora and Ratlam. At the close of the Pindari War in 1818 the whole country that is now under the Central India agency was in great confusion and disorder, having suffered heavily from the extortions of the Mahratta armies and from predatory bands. It had been the policy of the great Mahratta chiefs, Holkar and Sindhia, to trample down into complete subjection all the petty Rajput princes, whose lands they seized and from whom they levied heavy contributions of money. Many of these minor chiefs had been expelled from their possessions, had taken refuge in the hills and forest, and retaliated upon the Mahratta usurpers by wasting the lands which they had lost, until the Mahrattas compounded for peace by payment of blackmail. In this state of affairs all parties agreed to accept the interposition of the British government for the restoration of order, and under Lord Hastings the work of pacification was effected. The policy pursued was to declare the permanency of the rights existing at the time of the British interposition, conditionally upon the maintenance of order; to adjust and guarantee the relations of subordinate and tributary chiefs to their superiors so as to prevent all further disputes or encroachments; and to settle the claims of the ousted landholders, who had resorted to pillage or blackmail, by fixing grants of land to be made to them, or settling the money allowances to be paid to them. The general result was to place all the privileges, rights and possessions of these inferior chiefs under the guarantee or protection of the British government, to whom all disputes between the superior and inferior states must be referred, and whose decision is final upon all questions of succession to hereditary rights or rulership. The states have no general ethnological affinity, such as exists in Rajputana. Their territories are in many cases neither compact nor continuous, consisting of a number of villages here and there, with a nucleus of more or less importance round the chief town. Their relations to the government of India and to each other present many variations. Ten of them are under direct treaty with the government of India; others are held under sanads and deeds of fealty and obedience; while a third class, known as the mediatized states, are held under agreements mediated by the British government between them and their superior chiefs.