Central Provinces district gazetteers: Chhattisgarh feudatory states

Brett, E.A. de. 1909. Central Provinces district gazetteer: Chhattisgarh feudatory states. Bombay, Tines Press
p. 32
The elephant and the rhinoceros are no more found in a wild state here. Mr. Blockman in his Ain-i-Akbari, Volume I, states that in the Bastar forests elephants used to be found. As to the rhinoceros, Mr. Gayer writes : ' Some Murias in the hills of the Indravati described very fairly accurately to me a rhinoceros which they declared their fathers used to meet in the densely grassed valleys to the. north of the river about the Bailadila range. I can hardly believe they had ever heard of the rhinoceros from other parts of India, still less their fathers might have evolved a wonderful creature from their imaginations.'
Jerdon in his Mammals of India, 1874, states that the lesser ' Indian rhinoceros {Rhinoceros sondaicus) is found at present in the Bengal Sunderbans and very few individuals are stated to occur in the forest tract along the Mahanadi river. Bastar not being very far from the sources of the Mahanadi it is not unlikely that the Murijis story might be correct.
Bastar in Chhattisgarh, west of Orissa, 18.75 – 81.20