Marathas

Maratha मराठा
Engraving of a Maratha Soldier by James Forbes, 1813.
Religions	Hinduism
Languages	Marathi and Marathi dialects
Populated states	Major: Maharashtra Minor: Goa, Gujarat, Karnataka, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh.

The Maratha (IPA: [ˈməraʈa]; archaically transliterated as Marhatta or Mahratta) is a group of castes in India found predominantly in the state of Maharashtra. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, "Marathas are people of India, famed in history as yeoman warriors and champions of Hinduism." They reside primarily in the Indian state of Maharashtra.

Robert Vane Russell, an untrained ethnologist of the British Raj period, basing his research largely on Vedic literature, wrote that the Marathas are subdivided into 96 different clans, known as the 96 Kuli Marathas or 'Shahānnau Kule' Shahannau means 96 in Marathi. The general body of lists are often at great variance with each other.

The term "Maratha" originally referred to the speakers of the Marathi language. In the 17th century, it emerged as a designation for soldiers serving in the armies of Deccan sultanates (and later Shivaji). A number of Maratha warriors, including Shivaji's father, Shahaji, originally served in those armies. By the mid-1660s, Shivaji had established an independent Maratha kingdom. After his death, the kingdom expanded into a vast empire under the Peshwas, stretching from central India in the south, to Peshawar (in modern-day Pakistan) on the Afghanistan border in the north, and with expeditions to Bengal in the east. By the 19th century, the Empire had become a Confederacy of individual states controlled by Maratha chiefs such as Gaekwads of Baroda, the Holkars of Indore, the Scindias of Gwalior, the Puars of Dhar & Dewas, and Bhonsles of Nagpur. The Confederacy remained the pre-eminent power in India until their defeat by the British East India Company in the Third Anglo-Maratha War (1817–1818).