A History of the Mahrattas v1.c21.10

v1.c21.10

complexion, and their use of the Konkani dialect in their homes, point to their having entered the Konkan by sea. The theory of their foreign origin is supported to some extent by the prevalence among them of light-coloured and gray eyes, and by the low position which they formerly held among Brahmans. Wilks, for example, states that, when he wrote, the Brahmans of India denied that the Chitpāvans were Brahmans; and until the rise of Bālāji Visvanāth, the Pēshwā, they were employed merely as spies and harkāras (couriers). Bājī Rāo II, when he visited Nāsik, was not permitted to use the same flight of steps as the Brahman priests. The sect has a tradition that its ancestors reached the Konkan from Ambā Jogāi in the modern Hyderābād State, and that they were originally Deshasth Brahmans. For several reasons the suggestion that they reached the western littoral by sea is more probable, and some authorities (Rao Saheb V. N. Mandlik and General Haig) have endeavoured to trace them back to an original home on the Mekran coast, or the Persian Gulf, and even to Egypt. (Edwardes, *Byways of Bombay*, xiv.; *B.G.*, xviii. 1; Wilson, *Indian Caste*, 1877, ii. 19–21.)]