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The Nilgiris District is in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Nilgiri ((英語:Blue Mountains)) is also the name given to a range of mountains spread across the division between the states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. The Nilgiri Hills are part of a larger mountain chain known as the Western Ghats. Their highest point is the mountain of Doddabetta, height 2,633 m. The small district is mainly contained within this mountain range, with its headquarters at Ooty (Ootacamund or Udhagamandalam). It ranked first in a comprehensive Economic Environment index ranking districts in Tamil Nadu (not including Chennai) prepared by the Institute for Financial Management and Research in August 2009.〔 As of 2011, the Nilgiris district had a population of 735,394 with a sex-ratio of 1,042 females for every 1,000 males. ==History== The Nilgiri hills have a history going back several centuries. They were probably called the Blue Mountains because of the widespread blue Strobilanthes flower, or perhaps the smoky haze enveloping the area. It was originally tribal land that was occupied by the Todas, Badagas, Kotas, Kurumbas and Irulas. The lower Wynaad plateau in the west of the district had a different tribal population. Todas and Kotas were widespread across the Nilgiri plateau. The Badagas are a major non-tribal group, the largest indigenous group in the Nilgiris District. Unlike elsewhere in the country, no historical evidence is found of a state on the Nilgiris, or that it was anciently part of any kingdom or empire: it was originally a tribal land. Todas had hamlets (“mund”) across most of the plateau.The Kotas lived in seven dispersed villages ("kokal"). The Badagas had 435 villages ("hatti”) in central and eastern parts of the plateau, but they and the Todas had only a few hamlets on the lower Wynaad plateau and the nearby Biligiri Rangan hills. The Badagas have numbered about 135,000 in recent decades (18% of the District population), while the Todas are barely 1,500 and the Kotas just over 2,000. The hills were developed rapidly and peaceably under the British, beginning in 1819. There were then forty mud-forts in the area, but all were disused. During the British raj Ooty (the popular name for Ootacamund) served as the summer capital of the Madras Presidency from 1870 onwards. The several District Gazetteers published by the Government (1880, 1908, 1995) were reliable reports on the Nilgiris, its economy, demography and culture, but have to some extent been superseded by the ''Encyclopaedia of the Nilgiri Hills'' (2012). According to the Bibliography of publications on just this one district, it is probably the most heavily studied rural area anywhere in India, with close to 7,000 items in that list. Over 120 doctoral and master's theses have been written on this one district, in the natural and human sciences. This huge output was largely the work of Indian and foreign scholars, only recently augmented by numerous publications by local people. Although over a dozen languages are spoken in the Nilgiris, there was no literacy among indigenes until German and Swiss missionaries opened schools for boys and girls in a number of Badaga villages beginning in 1847. Ten of the Dravidian languages found only here have now been studied in great detail by professional linguists. Local placenames are derived mainly from the dominant Badagu language, e.g., Doddabetta, Coonoor, Kotagiri, Gudaluru, Kunda, etc., but Ootacamund is of Toda origin and Udagamandalam is a very recent tamilization of it. Before British-owned tea and coffee plantations were established, the dominant plateau landholders were Todas, Kotas and Badagas, but with other janmis in the Wynaad. A great deal of linguistic and other cultural evidence indicates, though, that the Badagas have lived in the area for some four centuries, having for the most part migrated during 1565-1617 from a block of villages near Nanjangud in southern Mysore (now Karnataka), though some came later, and Badaga elders have regularly stated this as fact. After all, their language is very close to Kannada. During that same period the first European set foot on the hills: an Italian priest named Fenicio who came to explore them. He interviewed people calling themselves Toda and Badega, the latter occupying just three villages at that time. After him the Europeans in India ignored the Ghats for some two centuries, until Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington, conducted a short military operation in the Wynaad in 1800. During 1804-1818 several East India Company personnel briefly visited parts of the district. More persistent was John Sullivan, then the Collector of Coimbatore, just south of the Nilgiris, who sent two surveyors to make a comprehensive study of the hills. They reached the site of Ootacamund, but failed to see the complete plateau. These two men were W. Keys and C. McMahon, and their mission (1812) was significant because they were the first British to make a cursory survey of the Nilgiri plateau and produce a map. A more detailed exploration, however, was done by J.C. Whish, N.W. Kindersley and Mohammed Rifash Obaidullah for the Madras Civil Service, who made a survey in 1818 and then reported back that they had discovered "the existence of a tableland possessing a European climate" John Sullivan, the Collector of Coimbatore, became the first European resident when he went up the next year and built himself a home. He also reported to the Madras Government on the mildness of the climate. Europeans soon started settling down here or using the plateau as a summer resort and a home for retirees. In 1870 the practice of moving the key government personnel to the hills during summer months also began. By the end of the 19th century, the hills were completely accessible with the laying of several Ghat roads and the railway line. In the later 19th century, when the British Straits Settlement shipped Chinese convicts to be jailed in India, some of these men were settled on the Nilgiri plateau near Naduvattam, where they married Tamil Paraiyan women, and had mixed children with them. One Chinese gardener was critical to the district's future, however, for he worked with Margaret B.L. Cockburn in Aruvenu, near Kotagiri, to open the first Nilgiri tea plantation, Allport's, in 1863. Her father, Montague D. Cockburn, had already opened the first coffee plantation there just after 1830. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Nilgiris District」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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