[1] The comte de Franqueville comments on the misuse of the title “Lord” in addressing judges as another anomaly which only adds to the confusion, but perhaps unnecessarily. According to Foss (vol. viii. p. 200) it was only in the 18th century that the judges began to be addressed by the title of “Your Lordship.” In the Year Books (he adds) they are constantly addressed by the title of “Sir.” “Sir, vous voyez bien,” &c.
CHANDA, a town and district of British India, in the Nagpur division of the Central Provinces. In 1901 the town had a population of 17,803. It is situated at the junction of the Virai and Jharpat rivers. It was the capital of the Gond kingdom of Chanda, which was established on the ruins of a Hindu state in the 11th or 12th century, and survived until 1751 (see [Gondwana]). The town is still surrounded by a stone wall 5½m. in circuit. It has several old temples and tombs, and the district at large is rich in remains of antiquity. There are manufactures of cotton, silk, brass-ware and leather slippers, and a considerable local trade.
The District of Chanda has an area of 10,156 sq. m. Excepting in the extreme west, hills are thickly dotted over the country, sometimes in detached ranges, occasionally in isolated peaks rising sheer out from the plain. Towards the east they increase in height, and form a broad tableland, at places 2000 ft. above sea-level. The Wainganga river flows through the district from north to south, meeting the Wardha river at Seoni, where their streams unite to form the Pranhita. Chanda is thickly studded with fine tanks, or rather artificial lakes, formed by closing the outlets of small valleys, or by throwing a dam across tracts intersected by streams. The broad clear sheets of water thus created are often very picturesque in their surroundings of wood and rock. The chief architectural objects of interest are the cave temples at Bhandak, Winjbasani, Dewala and Ghugus; a rock temple in the bed of the Wardha river below Ballalpur; the ancient temples at Markandi, Ambgaon and elsewhere; the forts of Wairagarh and Ballalpur; and the old walls of the city of Chanda, its system of waterworks, and the tombs of the Gond kings. In 1901 the population was 601,533, showing a decrease of 15% in the decade. The principal crops are rice, millet, pulse, wheat, oil-seeds and cotton. The district contains the coalfield of Warora, which was worked by government till 1906, when it was closed. Other fields are known, and iron ores also occur. The district suffered severely from famine in 1900, when in April the number of persons relieved rose to 90,000.
CHANDAUSI, a town of British India, in the Moradabad district of the United Provinces, 28 m. south of Moradabad. Pop. (1901) 25,711. It is an important station on the Oudh & Rohilkhand railway, with a junction for Aligarh. Its chief exports are of cotton, hemp, sugar and stone. There is a factory for pressing cotton.
CHAND BARDAI (fl. c. 1200), Hindu poet, was a native of Lahore, but lived at the court of Prithwi Raja (Prithiraj), the last Hindu sovereign of Delhi. His Prithiraj Rasau, a poem of some 100,000 stanzas, chronicling his master’s deeds and the contemporary history of his part of India, is valuable not only as historical material but as the earliest monument of the Western Hindi language, and the first of the long series of bardic chronicles for which Rajputana is celebrated. It is written in ballad form, and portions of it are still sung by itinerant bards throughout north-western India and Rajputana.
See Lieut.-Col. James Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajast’han (2 vols., London, 1829-1832; repub. by Lalit Mohan Auddy, 2 vols. ib., 1894-1895), where good translations are given.