Page:Mádhava Ráo Sindhia and the Hindu Reconquest of India.djvu/18

12 however, had been known for some time from the name of their country: for the name Marhat occurs in the history of Sultán Juna (or Muhammad Tughlak) who invaded Southern India in the middle of the fourteenth century; and before long we find mention of them in connection with the Musalmán kingdom of Bijapur. Yusaf ‘Adil Sháh, the first of the ‘Adil Sháhi dynasty, is said to have given command of 12,000 infantry to a Hindu Chief from that country; and in the reigns of his successors they freely shared in public employment. They were known as light cavalry, and they seem to have taught the Bijapur Musalmáns that system of guerilla warfare to which the kingdom owed its ability to resist its enemies for nearly two hundred years.

So much has this system of war been celebrated that we have fallen into a way of thinking of the people of Maháráshtra as all homogeneous and a mere tribe of predatory riders. The facts, however, do not altogether affirm this view. On the contrary we find them divided, like Hindu societies elsewhere, into distinct classes: the Bráhmans, who have been the most distinguished in public affairs; an ordinary class of fighting men claiming to be descended from Rájput immigrants; the Kunbis, or agriculturists; and a mixed multitude of townsmen and artisans, often called, locally, Shankarjáti, probably sprung from marriages between the pure Hindu immigrants and the aboriginal women. Their state appears to have at once adopted the character of a federal common-