A History of the Mahrattas v1.c5.s4.1

v1.c5.s4.1

The late Mr. Justice Ranade, in his essay on the rise of the Marāthā power,¹ points out that the political revolution which united the people of Mahārāshtra against the Muhammadan Empire of Delhi synchronized with a religious, social and literary revival in the Deccan. This movement manifested itself in the partial emancipation of the Sūdras, the lowest of the four social orders mentioned in the Code of Manu, several of whom were elevated to the two higher orders of Kshattri and Vaish, in protests against the formal ritualism and caste-exclusiveness, introduced and fostered by Brahmanism, and in the appearance of gurus, saints and poets, drawn from the lower as well as the upper strata of society, who helped through the medium of the Marāthī language to foster the idea of nationality among the general mass of the people of Mahārāshtra. This feature of Marāthā history finds no place in Grant Duff’s invaluable work, which is concerned wholly with the political history of the time; and even had he found leisure to deal with it, one may doubt whether literary research was sufficiently advanced at the opening of the nineteenth century to have rendered possible any estimate of the influence of vernacular literature upon the progress of the Marāthā people.