Narsinghpur

Narsinghpur, a town and district of British India, in the Nerbudda division of the Central Provinces. The town is on the river Singri, and has a railway station 52 m. E. of Jubbulpore; pop. (1901) 11,233. The district has an area of 1976 sq. m. It forms a portion of the upper part of the Nerbudda valley. The first of those wide alluvial basins which, alternating with rocky gorges, give so varied a character to the river's course, opens out just below the famous marble rocks in Jubbulpore, and extends westward for 225 m., including the whole of Narsinghpur, together with the greater part of Hoshangabad. The Satpura hills to the south are here a generally regular range, nowhere more than 500 ft. above the plain, and running almost parallel to the river, at a distance of 15 or 20 m. In the intervening valley, the rich level of black wheat land is seldom broken, except by occasional mounds of gravel or nodular limestone, which afford serviceable village sites. Along the foot of the boundary hills the alluvium gives way to belts of red gravelly soil, rice and sugar-cane take the place of wheat, and forest trees that of mango groves. The population in 1901 was 315,518, showing a decrease of 14.5% in the decade, due to famine. The principal crops are wheat, millets, rice, pulses, oil-seeds and cotton. There are manufactures of cotton, silk, brass and iron-ware. At Mohpani are coal-mines. The Great Indian Peninsula railway runs through the district, with a branch to Mohpani.

See Narsinghpur District Gazetteer (Bombay, 1906).