4 - The peoples of the Sahyadri under Marathas and British

Summary

Introduction

The processes that we have described in the Baglan hills and the north Konkan occurred more intensively in the relatively narrow strip of mountains that separate the Dakhan plateau from the lowlands along the west coast. The Sahyadri range not only separated the rich trading ports, paddy fields and coconut groves of the Konkan from their markets inland, but its narrow valleys offered abundant and controllable sources of irrigation both for arable farmers and for specialist horticulturists. Meanwhile, the numerous steep but flat-topped mountains provided natural refuges for the lords whose power was based not only on the taxes of the peasantry and but also on resources garnered by raiding and trading in the plains to the east and west. The size of their take may be gathered (among other things) from the amounts invested in building the scores of hill-forts that crown almost every suitable peak in the western mountains. The Sultans of the Dakhan found it convenient to term them deshmukhs, but in their own estimation they were rajas.

Centralising courts soon found that they were best managed by playing them off against each other – so a late sixteenth-century document records that a particular fiefdom had its origins in 1426 in the fact that a rebellious chief had entrenched himself within the Bhivar valley and none of the nobles of the Sultan's court dared to go against him; then the ancestor of the Savant deshmukhs offered to do so, successfully overcame him and was awarded the deshmukhi, as well as a quarter of the revenues of the area.