, the name of the “caste-cluster of agriculturalists-turned-warriors” inhabiting the north-west Dakhan, Mahārās̲h̲tra “the great country”, a term which is extended to all Marāt́hīspeakers. The Marāt́hā homeland stretched between 15° N. and 23° N., nearly equidimensional with the main mass of the Dakhan lavas north of the Malaprabha river and south of the Sātpūras. It lies within the rain-shadow of the Western Ghāts, a plateau compartmented by mesas and buttes between ¶ which valleys of black soil, watered by a 20” to 30” annual rainfall, yielded cereals, oilseeds a…