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 Vendee. 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 hi