KHOLM (Polish Chelm), a town of Russian Poland, in the government of Lublin, 45 m. by rail E.S.E. of the town of Lublin. Pop. (1897), 19,236. It is a very old city and the see of a bishop, and has an archaeological museum for church antiquities.
KHONDS, or Kandhs, an aboriginal tribe of India, inhabiting the tributary states of Orissa and the Ganjam district of Madras. At the census of 1901 they numbered 701,198. Their main divisions are into Kutia or hill Khonds and plain-dwelling Khonds; the landowners are known as Raj Khonds. Their religion is animistic, and their pantheon includes eighty-four gods. They have given their name to the Khondmals, a subdivision of Angul district in Orissa: area, 800 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 64,214. The Khond language, Kui, spoken in 1901 by more than half a million persons, is much more closely related to Telugu than is Gondi. The Khonds are a finer type than the Gonds. They are as tall as the average Hindu and not much darker, while in features they are very Aryan. They are undoubtedly a mixed Dravidian race, with much Aryan blood.
The Khonds became notorious, on the British occupation of their district about 1835, from the prevalence and cruelty of the human sacrifices they practised. These “Meriah” sacrifices, as they were called, were intended to further the fertilization of the earth. It was incumbent on the Khonds to purchase their victims. Unless bought with a price they were not deemed acceptable. They seldom sacrificed Khonds, though in hard times Khonds were obliged to sell their children and they could then be purchased as Meriahs. Persons of any race, age or sex, were acceptable if purchased. Numbers were bought and kept and well treated; and Meriah women were encouraged to become mothers. Ten or twelve days before the sacrifice the victim’s hair was cut off, and the villagers having bathed, went with the priest to the sacred grove to forewarn the goddess. The festival lasted three days, and the wildest orgies were indulged in.
See Major Macpherson, Religious Doctrines of the Khonds; his account of their religion in Jour. R. Asiatic Soc. xiii. 220-221 and his Report upon the Khonds of Ganjam and Cuttack (Calcutta, 1842); also District Gazetteer of Angul (Calcutta, 1908).
KHORASAN, or Khorassan (i.e. “land of the sun”), a geographical term originally applied to the eastern of the four quarters (named from the cardinal points) into which the ancient monarchy of the Sassanians was divided. After the Arab conquest the name was retained both as the designation of a definite province and in a looser sense. Under the new Persian empire the expression has gradually become restricted to the north-eastern portion of Persia which forms one of the five great provinces of that country. The province is conterminous E. with Afghanistan, N. with Russian Transcaspian territory, W. with Astarabad and Shahrud-Bostam, and S. with Kerman and Yezd. It lies mainly within 29° 45′-38° 15′ N. and 56°-61° E., extending about 320 m. east and west and 570 m. north and south, with a total area of about 150,000 sq. m. The surface is mountainous. The ranges generally run in parallel ridges, inclosing extensive valleys, with a normal direction from N.W. to S.E. The whole of the north is occupied by an extensive highland system composed of a part of the Elburz and its continuation extending to the Paropamisus. This system, sometimes spoken of collectively as the Kuren Dagh, or Kopet Dagh from its chief sections, forms in the east three ranges, the Hazar Masjed, Binalud Kuh and Jagatai, enclosing the Meshed-Kuchan valley and the Jovain plain. The former is watered by the Kashaf-rud (Tortoise River), or river of Meshed, flowing east to the Hari-rud, their junction forming the Tejen, which sweeps round the Daman-i-Kuh, or northern skirt of the outer range, towards the Caspian but loses itself in the desert long before reaching it. The Jovain plain is watered by the Kali-i-mura, an unimportant river which flows south to the Great Kavir or central depression. In the west the northern highlands develop two branches: (1) the Kuren Dagh, stretching through the Great and Little Balkans to the Caspian at Krasnovodsk Bay, (2) the Ala Dagh, forming a continuation of the Binalud Kuh and joining the mountains between Bujnurd and Astarabad, which form part of the Elburz system. The Kuren Dagh and Ala Dagh enclose the valley of the Atrek River, which flows west and south-west into the Caspian at Hassan Kuli Bay. The western offshoots of the Ala Dagh in the north and the mountains of Astarabad in the south enclose the valley of the Gurgan River, which also flows westwards and parallel to the Atrek to the south-eastern corner of the Caspian. The outer range has probably a mean altitude of 8000 ft., the highest known summits being the Hazar Masjed (10,500) and the Kara Dagh (9800). The central range seems to be higher, culminating with the Shah-Jehan Kuh (11,000) and the Ala Dagh (11,500). The southern ridges, although generally much lower, have the highest point of the whole system in the Shah Kuh (13,000) between Shahrud and Astarabad. South of this northern highland several parallel ridges run diagonally across the province in a N.W.-S.E. direction as far as Seistan.
Beyond the Atrek and other rivers watering the northern valleys a few brackish and intermittent rivers lose themselves in the Great Kavir, which occupies the central and western parts of the province. The true character of the kavir, which forms the distinctive feature of east Persia, has scarcely been determined, some regarding it as the bed of a dried-up sea, others as developed by the saline streams draining to it from the surrounding highlands. Collecting in the central depressions, which have a mean elevation of scarcely more than 500 ft. above the Caspian, the water of these streams is supposed to form saline deposits with a thin hard crust, beneath which the moisture is retained for a considerable time, thus producing those dangerous and slimy quagmires which in winter are covered with brine, in summer with a treacherous incrustation of salt. Dr Sven Hedin explored the central depressions in 1906.
The surface of Khorasan thus consists mainly of highlands, saline, swampy deserts and upland valleys, some fertile and well-watered. Of the last, occurring mainly in the north, the chief are the longitudinal valley stretching from near the Herat frontier through Meshed, Kuchan and Shirvan to Bujnurd, the Derrehgez district, which lies on the northern skirt of the outer range projecting into the Akhal Tekkeh domain, now Russian territory, and the districts of Nishapur and Sabzevar which lie south of the Binalud and Jagatai ranges. These fertile tracts produce rice and other cereals, cotton, tobacco, opium and fruits in profusion. Other products are manna, suffron, asafoetida and other gums. The chief manufactures are swords, stoneware, carpets and rugs, woollens, cottons, silks and sheepskin pelisses (pustin, Afghan poshtin).