CHOTA (or Chutia) NAGPUR, a division of British India in Bengal, consisting of five British districts and two feudatory states. It is a hilly, forest-clad plateau, inhabited mostly by aboriginal races, between the basins of the Sone, the Ganges and the Mahanadi. The five British districts are Hazaribagh, Ranchi, Palamau, Manbhum and Singhbhum. The total area of the British districts is 27,101 sq. m. The population in 1901 was 4,900,429. The tributary states are noticed separately below. The Chota Nagpur plateau is an offshoot of the great Vindhyan range, and its mean elevation is upwards of 2000 ft. above the sea-level. In the W. it rises to 3600 ft., and to the E. and S. its lower steppe, from 800 to 1000 ft. in elevation, comprises a great portion of the Manbhum and Singhbhum districts. The whole is about 14,000 sq. m. in extent, and forms the source of the Barakhar, Damodar, Kasai, Subanrekha, Baitarani, Brahmani, Ib and other rivers. Sal forests abound. The principal jungle products are timber, various kinds of medicinal fruits and herbs, lac, tussur silk and mahuá flowers, which are used as food by the wild tribes and also distilled into a strong country liquor. Coal exists in large quantities, and is worked in the Jherria, Hazaribagh, Giridih and Gobindpur districts. The chief workings are at Jherria, which were started in 1893, and have developed into one of the largest coal-fields in India. Formerly gold was washed from the sands in the bed of the Subanrekha river, but the operations are now almost wholly abandoned. Iron-ores abound, together with good building stone. The indigenous inhabitants consist of non-Aryan tribes who were driven from the plains by the Hindus and took refuge in the mountain fastnesses of the Chota Nagpur plateau. The principal of them are Kols, Santals, Oraons, Dhangars, Mundas and Bhumij. These tribes were formerly turbulent, and a source of trouble to the Mahommedan governors of Bengal and Behar; but the introduction of British rule has secured peace and security, and the aboriginal races of Chota Nagpur are now peaceful and orderly subjects. The principal agricultural products are rice, Indian corn, pulses, oil-seeds and potatoes. A small quantity of tea is grown in Hazaribagh and Ranchi districts. Lac and tussur silk-cloth are largely manufactured. The climate of Chota Nagpur is dry and healthy. The Jherria extension branch of the East India railway runs to Katrasgarh, while the Bengal-Nagpur railway also serves the division.
The Chota Nagpur States were formerly nine in number. But the five states of Chang Bhakar, Korca, Sirguja, Udaipur and Jashpur were transferred from Bengal to the Central Provinces in October 1905, and the two Uriya-speaking states of Gangpur and Bonai were attached to the Orissa Tributary States. There now remain, therefore, only the two states of Kharsawan and Saraikela. At the decline of the Mahratta power in the early part of the 19th century, the Chota Nagpur states came under British protection. Before the rise of the British power in India their chiefs exercised almost absolute sovereignty in their respective territories.
See F.B. Bradley-Birt, Chota Nagpore (1903).
CHOUANS (a Bas-Breton word signifying screech-owls), the name applied to smugglers and dealers in contraband salt, who rose in insurrection in the west of France at the time of the Revolution and joined the royalists of La Vendée. It has been suggested that the name arose from the cry they used when approaching their nocturnal rendezvous; but it is more probable that it was derived from a nickname applied to their leader Jean Cottereau (1767-1794). Originally a contraband manufacturer of salt, Cottereau along with his brothers had several times been condemned and served sentence; but the Revolution, by destroying the inland customs, ruined his trade. On the 15th of August 1792, he led a band of peasants to prevent the departure of the volunteers of St Ouen, near Laval, and retired to the wood of Misdon, where they lived in huts and subterranean chambers. The Chouans then waged a guerrilla warfare against the republicans and, sustained by the royalists and from abroad, carried on their assassinations and brigandage with success. From Lower Maine the insurrection soon spread to Brittany, and throughout the west of France. In 1793 Cottereau came to Laval with some 500 men; the band grew rapidly and swelled into a considerable army, which assumed the name of La Petite Vendee. But after the decisive defeats at Le Mans and Savenay, Cottereau retired again to his old haunts in the wood of Misdon, and resumed his old course of guerrilla warfare. Misfortunes here increased upon him, until he fell into an ambuscade and was mortally wounded. He died among his followers in February 1794. Cottereau’s brothers also perished in the war, with the exception of Rene, who lived until 1846. Royalist authors have made of Cottereau a hero and martyr, titles to which his claim is not established. After the death of Cottereau, the chief leaders of the Chouans were Georges Cadoudal (q.v.) and a man who went by the name of Jambe d’Argent. For several months the Chouans continued their petty warfare, which was disgraced by many acts of ferocity and rapine; in August 1795 they dispersed; but they were guilty of several conspiracies up to 1815. (See also [Vendée].)
See the articles in La Révolution française, vol. 29, La Chouannerie dans la Manche; vol. 32, La Chouannerie dans l’Eure; vol. 40, La Chouannerie dans le Morbihan (1793-1794); Sarot, Les Tribunaux répressifs ordinaires de la Manche en matière politique pendant la première Révolution (Paris, 1881), 4 vols.; Th. de Closmadeux, Quiberon (1795), Émigrés et Chouans, commissions militaires, interrogations et jugements (Paris, 1898), the only authority on the celebrated affair of Quiberon; E. Daudet, La Police et les Chouans dans le Consulat et I’Empire, 1800-1815 (Paris, 1895). Also the works of Ch. L. Chessin mentioned under [Vendée].
CHRESMOGRAPHION (from Gr. χρησμός, oracle, and γράφειν, to write), an architectural term sometimes given to the chamber between the pronaes and the cella in Greek temples where oracles were delivered.
CHRESTIEN, FLORENT (1541-1596), French satirist and Latin poet, the son of Guillaume Chrestien, an eminent French physician and writer on physiology, was born at Orleans on the 26th of January 1541. A pupil of Henri Estienne, the Hellenist, at an early age he was appointed tutor to Henry of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV., who made him his librarian. Brought up as a Calvinist, he became a convert to Catholicism. He was the author of many good translations from the Greek into Latin verse,—amongst others, of versions of the Hero and Leander attributed to Musaeus, and of many epigrams from the Anthology. In his translations into French, among which are remarked those of Buchanan’s Jephthé (1567), and of Oppian De Venatione (1575)> he is not so happy, being rather to be praised for fidelity to his original than for excellence of style. His principal claim to a place among memorable satirists is as one of the authors of the Satyre Ménippée, the famous pasquinade in the interest of his old pupil, Henry IV., in which the harangue put into the mouth of cardinal de Pelvé is usually attributed to him. He died on the 3rd of October 1596 at Vendôme.