Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 7.djvu/142

MAHHATTAS. zenith, and the various transactions, political and military, from 1757 to 1818 reduced them to the condition in which they now exist. It was impossible that the predatory hordes which ravaged the whole of India almost every year on pretence of collecting national demands, should stand before the disciplined troops of England and the science of English commanders; and though both Sindia, Holkar, and the Peshwah, the two former in particular, organized powerful native armies, trained and disciplined by French and other officers, yet in the battles which ensued in the two Mahratta wars, they were successively beaten by the English commanders, their guns taken, and their prestige destroyed. Before the rise of the British power, however, the Mahrattas had weakened their national existence by disagreements and destructive wars between themselves; Sindia and Holkar were bitter enemies, and fought frequent battles with each other with varied success, and the Peshwah joined one or other as policy seemed to dictate; but the first attempted league against the British was frustrated by dissension, and the second in 1817-18 failed altogether from the same causes of internal strife and disunion, and the shattered portions can never unite again for any offensive movement. The hereditary soldiers of the Deccan are now peaceful, skilful farmers and landholders; they have covered their formerly barren rough country with excellent cultivation and thriving villages, and are prosperous beyond any point of their previous history.

In Malwah and Central India they have not settled down to be farmers or landholders, or to mingle with local races. The comparatively few there are, are servants of Holkar, Sindia, or Puar of Dhar, and are employed in their small forces, or police. Mahrattas do not even marry in Central India, but go to the Deccan to their own several localities to choose their wives, whom in some instances they take with them—in others, allowing them to remain, and visiting them when they an get leave. At home they have places in the general community, they are hereditary landholders or hold hereditary appointments, or offices; but while absent they are literally strangers and pilgrims in a foreign land, with no local ties to it but the service which affords them means of subsistence.

Mahrattas are for the most part Sudras of the fourth Hindoo class, though some affect to have had a Rajpoot descent, and claim to be Kshuttries. They acknowledge the priestly rule of Brahmins, and perform all prescribed ceremonies of that faith; but there are particular local divinities held to be incarnations, for which they have peculiar reverence, and to whose temples thousands resort on annual pilgrimages. Some Mahrattas are devotees of Vishnu as Krishna, some of Mahadeo, or Siva, as Khundoba. The goddess Devi is also worshipped as well from fear as from love. But besides the, as they may be termed, orthodox divinities, their ancient fetishism is evident in sacrifices to other spirits and demons,