140 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
of this proposition there are other land-marks and survivals which can be relied upon in support of this view. The first thing to which attention must be drawn is the fact that a great number of the ‘Kul’ which indicate the status of a Rajput are also to be found among the Mahars. In the quarrels that have taken place between the Brahmins on the one hand and the Marathas on the other on the issue whether the latter were Kshatriyas or not, the test sought to be applied was whether the ‘Kul’ of the claimant was one of the 96 ‘Kuls’ which were admittedly belonged to the Rajputs in whose status as Kshatriyas was beyond question. Now if this test was applied to the Mahars, there could be no question that the Mahars would have to be pronounced as belonging originally to the Rajput that is to say to the Kshatriya class. It is suggested that the Mahars have been appropriating the ‘Kuls’ of the Rajputs since very recently with the idea of improving their social standing. That evidently is a mistake. There is a long tradition among the Mahars that they belong to what is called the ‘Somavansh’ which is one of the two branches of the Kshatriyas, that the Mahars have had these ‘gotras’ from long past and have not appropriated to them in recent times is clear from the fact that as long ago as the Court of Enquiry held by the Brahmins into the status of the last Maratha King of Satara, namely Pratapsing whom the Brahmins refused to recognise as a Kshatriya. One party of the Brahmins who favoured the side of Pratapsing contended that as the Bhonsale Kul was one of the 96 Kuls of the Rajputs, and as the Rajputs were recognised as Kshatriyas, Pratapsing must be propouned as a Kshatriya. The other side in reply to this contention propounded a conundrum. It contended that if that argument was sound, all the Mahars would have to be pronounced as Kshatriya because they too had ‘Kuls’ like those of the Rajputs. Apart from the validity of the view as a test, the fact remains that the Kuls which the Mahars have appropriated is no new phenomenon. This is one consideration in support of the view that the Mahars are not aboriginals.
The second consideration in support of this view is the word of salutation which is peculiar to the Mahars. The word of salutation used by the Mahars is Johar. This word is undoubtedly a corrupt form of the Sanskrit word ‘Yoddhar’. It is well-known that