The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c8.81

c8.81

The Maratha commanders can be divided into two classes. There were veterans like Malhar Rao Holkar, who had risen from the lowest rank. They could claim a wide and varied experience but were generally illiterate or ill educated even when judged by the standard of their own days. But the second class, to which belonged hereditary princes like Balaji Baji Rao and Daulat Rao Sindhia, could claim men more fortunate in their birth, and therefore of a more cultured type. A Maratha has been generally represented as an uncultured barbarian, mainly because his portrait has been almost always drawn by his enemies. Wilks says, ‘They are well characterised by the Persian compound Muft-Khoor, eating at other people’s expense.’ ‘A modern Maratha’, he continues, ‘is utterly destitute of the generosity and point of honour which belong to a bold robber. If we should attempt to describe him by English terms, we must draw a character combined of the plausible and gentle manners of a swindler, the dexterity of a pickpocket, and the meanness of a pedlar; equally destitute of mercy and shame, he will higgle in selling the rags of a beggar whom he has plundered or overreached; and is versatile, as occasion offers, to swagger as a bully, or to cringe as a mendicant when he dares not rob².’ Such sweeping generalisation, it is needless to point out, is neither fair nor accurate. Moor, who could claim to know the Maratha officers much better than Wilks, deliberately exempted them from the charge of inhumanity;³ and Skinner, who served under them, found many lovable traits in the Maratha character. ‘I have made myself well known among the Maratha chieftains', he says, ‘whom I found a good, generous hearted race of men.’¹