New History of the Marathas v1.c5.43

v1.c5.43

One may be curious to know what are the oldest existing compositions in Marathi. Curiously enough, the oldest writings⁵ in Marathi comes from the Mysore State, being dated 983 A.C. A few inscriptions in old Marathi have been found in different places, such as Palasdev (1157 A.C.), Ter (1184 A.C.), Parel (A.C. 1180), another at Patan in Khandesh (A.C. 1206) and one at Pandharpur (A.C. 1273). Some stray pages of *Panchatantra* translated from Sanskrit into old Marathi and an astronomical treatise by Shripati called *Ratnamālā* are known to be the earliest extant compositions in Marathi. Mukundrāja preceded Jnaneshwar by about a hundred years and wrote his work *Viveka-Sindhu* in Marathi, although the present manuscripts give a modernized form of it. The Mahanubhav literature of the last quarter of the thirteenth century is also available for the study of old Marathi. While, therefore, we are sure that modern Marathi began to take a definite shape about 1200 A.C., the writing, the forms and structure now available to us, belong to a much later period.