Maratha

Traditional Indian society was a collection of endogamous subgroups (in
which marriage is decreed by law to
occur only between members of the
same group) known as jatis. Jatis were
organized (and their social status determined) by the group’s hereditary occupation, over which each group held a
monopoly. The Maratha jati was one of
the dominant landholding communities
in the Maharashtra region, along with
the Kunbis. They were most concentrated
on the Konkan coast and the inland
region around the city of Pune. The
Marathas were tough peasant farmers
who by the middle of the eighteenth
century had forged a large but shortlived empire, the Maratha confederacy,
extending over much of northern and
central India. By the latter part of the
eighteenth century, the confederacy had
fragmented into various smaller states.
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Manvantara