MARATHI, ma-ra'te. A language spoken in Western India, and closely related to Sindhi, Gujarati, and other modern vernaculars of lndo Iranian origin. It is the tongue of between 15,000,000 and 20,000,000 people, and is divided into several dialects, which are comprised under the two great groups Dakhani and Konkani. The former of these is found, as its name implies, in the Deccan, and contains the standard dialect, called Deshi, spoken near Poona. The district of the Konkani is along the coast in the south western portion of the country of the Mahrattas. It contains a considerable mixture of Dravidian words from the neighboring Kanarese. and around Goa it has numerous Portuguese loan-words. Marathi as a whole, despite its importations from. Persian and Arabic, has departed less from the Sanskrit form than almost any other New In dian language. It is probably descended from the vernacular form of the Maharashtri Prakrit dialect of mediaeval India.
Marathi literature is abundant. It begins in the thirteenth century with Namdev, a predeces sor of the famous Tukaram (A.D. 1609), who
wrote religious poems of a pronounced Vishnu itic trend. Another poet almost as highly es teemed as Tukaram was Mayur Pandit or Moro pant in the eighteenth century. Prose works in Ma ra th i a re comparatively unimportant. Mod ern literature in this language, under English in fluence, is copious but rather mediocre. The alphabet employed by the Marathi is the Devana gari, in which Sanskrit is written.
Consult: Navalkar, Student's Mareithi Gram mar (Bombay, 1880 ) ; Joshi, foam preh e nsi re Marathi Gran»nar (Poona, 19001: Molesworth and Candy, llarilthi and English Dictionary (2d ed., Bombay, 1857) ; Godhole, Selections from the MarCithi Poets (5th ed., Bombay, 1864) ; 'The Chief Marathi Poets," in the Tra»sac lions of the Ninth. international Congress of Ori entalists, vol. i. (London, 1892) ; Manwaring, Marathi Prorerbs Collected and Translated (Ox ford, 1899).