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That some historic truth lies below the garbled tale of shipwreck and resurrection is partly proved by the physical traits of their descendants, of those men, in fact, whose immediate ancestors, employed at first as messengers or spies of Maratha chieftains, by innate cleverness, tact, and faculty for management gradually welded together the loose Maratha confederacy and became directors of the internal and external politics of the Peshwa's dominions.
Again, at the very time of the Census, the Maratha caste was in conflict with the brahman in two Native States of Western India, Kohlapur and Baroda, over a matter of religious privileges.
But it is quite true that to the memory of a time when for once, and once only, in Indian history, their caste established a great secular dominion, may be ascribed the tendency to disloyalty among the Maratha Brahmins. The case of Bengal is very different.
That in India the British Government has found the centres of active disaffection located in the Maratha country and in Lower Bengal, is a phenomenon which can be to a large extent accounted for by reference to Anglo-Indian history.
These crumbling halls, the shrine of Shivabai, and the outwork at the extreme north point of the hill are the only remains directly connected with Maratha supremacy. The out-work which overhangs the sheer northern scarp performed the same function as the famous Tarpeian Rock of old Rome.
Lord Moira, created Marquis of Hastings in 1816, was at last free to hunt down the Pindárís, with the sullen acquiescence of the Maráthá governments, and he executed his task with extraordinary vigour.
The third letter was written in modern Greek, using the familiar "thee" and "thou" of intimate speech. My old Nurse Maratha: The war kept me from thee, when at last I could get away. I would have come to Saloniki if I could but I had an errand that took me straight to England. Velo is dead, Maratha. He was shot in the big battle. You must have been praying when he died, if I know thee still.
The very submission of the great Maráthá powers had set free large bands of irregular troops, with no livelihood but pillage, and ever ready, like the Italian condottieri of the later middle ages, to enlist in the service of any aggressive state.
The lintel of the shrine is surmounted with inferior coloured pictures of Hindu deities, and two printed and tolerably faithful portraits of the great Maratha chieftain. "Thence," in the words of the poet, "we turned and slowly clomb the last hard footstep of that iron crag," and traversing the seventh and last gate reached the ruined Ambarkhana or Elephant-stable on the hill top.
But on the other hand many men of action have been deified not because they taught anything but because they seemed to be more than human forces. Râma is a classical example of such deification and many local deities can be shown to be warriors, bandits and hunters whose powers inspired respect. It is said that there is a disposition in the Bombay Presidency to deify the Maratha leader Śivaji.
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