New History of the Marathas v1.c5.27

v1.c5.27

1. Origin of the Marathas.—The latest census has computed two and a half crores of persons to be the Marāthi-speaking population of India, and most of them inhabit that portion of the country which has been known by the ancient name Mahārāshtra, ‘the great nation of the Rathas, Rathikas or Rashtrikas’, famous from the days of yore for valour and energy. In the literature of the early Christian centuries the words Mahārāshtra, Mahārāshtrika and Mahārāshtri (the last being the name of one of the Prakrit languages) occur in copious frequency. Mahārathi (masculine) and Mahārathini (feminine) are words in the Karla cave and other inscriptions of the Sātavāhana period. Varāhamihira, a famous astronomer of the sixth century, uses the word Mahārāshtras, which later came to be corrupted into Mahrāttā or Marāthā. Rājashekhar, a Sanskrit author of the 9th century, uses the word Marahatti in the feminine gender. The word occurs in various forms in all subsequent literatures of India.¹