891128 Ballads of the Marathas RENDERED INTO ENGLISH VERSE FROM THE MARATHI ORIGINALS BY HARRY ARBUTHNOT ACWORTH H. M. INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE PRESIDENT, BOMBAY ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16TH STREET 1894 12-23-25 SM. समर्पण माझ्या गुणदोष परोक्षकां मध्ये परम सुशिक्षित परम सुज्ञ आणि परम कृपाळु अशा माझ्या प्रिय मातेच्या स्मरणार्थ. Thin 12-14-25- INTRODUCTION IN presenting to my readers this humble attempt to popularise some of the ballads of the Marathas, it may not be out of place to submit a slight sketch of the early history and the poetic literature of the people whose national energies they commemorate. The Maratha race has been for centuries, and is still, among the most important of those which inhabit the Indian Peninsula. The three most powerful of the Hindu princes who acknowledge allegiance to the Imperial Crown of Britain, viz. Sindia, Holkar, and the Gaikwar, are Marathas, and their court language is Marathi, though this is not the language of the countries over which they rule. But every one of these three princes has his ancestral home in the Maratha Deccan and bears a Marathi name. The same is the case with the princely house of Tanjore. The Maratha ditch at Calcutta testifies to exploits at a scene even more distant from Maharashtra, and on the fatal day of Paniput the Maratha armies upheld the cause of India against the Afghan invader fifty miles to the northward of Delhi, the capital of the Great Mogul. The British dominion, quelling all internal aggression by a might too great to be contested, has left no opportunity of judging whether the flood-tide of Maratha success would ever have ebbed back into its ancient boundaries, or even have been there overwhelmed by the waves of a newer and more vigorous race of Asiatic conquerors; but during the years when India was 'becoming red,' the Marathas were b |