The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c8.56

c8.56

The Maratha horseman as well as his comrade in the infantry was very lightly and scantily clad. Grose wrote in 1757, ‘A roll of coarse muslin round their heads, to which they give the name of puckery, or turbant, or perhaps a bit of cloth, or striped calico, or cuttance-cap; a lungce or clout, barely to cover their nakedness, and a pamree or loose mantle to throw over their shoulders, or to lye on upon the ground, composes the whole of their wardrobe. This however is only to be understood of their common men, though the officers do not much out-figure them: so that nothing can present a more rag-a-muffin appearance than these troops, together with their little ill-favored horses, the furniture of which is in a stile answerable to the rest.’² This continued to be the usual dress of the ordinary Maratha trooper throughout the eighteenth century, for the author of *Tarikh-i-Ibrahimkhan*, who wrote during the Governor-Generalship of Lord Cornwallis, also says that ‘the ordinary dress worn by these people comprises a turban, tunic, selah (loose mantle) and janghiah (short drawers)’.³ But the *gardis*, who accompanied Parashram Bhau Patwardhan on his Mysore expedition, were better dressed. ‘Their coats’, says Lt. Moor, ‘are of red serge with a blue collar and cuff cut in the country taste to lap over before and tie with strings’;⁴ but the firearms used by them were as usual defective; we are informed by the same authority ‘their arms are for the most part English, and out of twenty, two will be found without locks, six without cocks and perhaps not a flint among the remaining twelve’.⁵