A History of the Mahrattas v1.c9.87

v1.c9.87

The Sawunts were hereditary Deshmookhs of Waree, near Goa, and acquired the title of Buhadur from the kings of Beejapoor, during some of the wars against the Portuguese. Their original name was Bhonslay, and their chief is frequently, to this day, styled the Bhonslay.² It is remarkable of their territory, Ghorepurays; a distinction which both families keep up, but for which they can give no satisfactory reason: the first Ghorepuray that joined Sivajee was one of the former. The head of the latter is the Patell of a village near Satara. [Both Kāpsi and Mudhōl are now states under the Bombay Government, the former being a feudatory of the Kolhāpur State, and the latter a British feudatory. The meaning of the terms sathkas and navkas is still obscure. Kas in Marāthi signifies ‘strength, substance, essence, pith, &c.,’ and a suggestion has been made that the terms may therefore bear analogy to the names Visa and Dasa, ‘the 20s and 10s,’ applied to certain well-known caste-subdivisions. My friend Mr. N. V. Mandlik of Bombay tells me, however, that he consulted the present Rājā of Mudhōl, who explained that the words refer to the fact that in old days the Kāpsi family provided nine fighting-men, and Mudhōl seven, for service under Kolhāpur. The main objection to this theory is that no word ‘kas’ signifying ‘warrior’ or fighting-man can be traced. The Bombay Gazetteer, unlike Grant Duff, treats the a in kas as long. This suggests the possibility of the word being identical with Kās, a Dravidian or un-Sanskrit word, signifying ‘an unmeasured plot or parcel of land,’ ‘an estate,’ which seems to carry the division of lands back to pre-Aryan ages. (See B.G., vol. xviii, pt. ii, p. 550, note 2; p. 617, note 1; and vol. xvi, p. 208, note 3.