ABSTRACT
T HE fall of Baji Rao Peshwa invested the Government of Bombay with the responsibility of administering territories which had formed the hub of an extensive empire in western and in central India in the r Sth century. We have already discussed the social and political institutions which flourished in these territories under the Peshwas, and we have focused attention in particular on the bonds which tied different castes and classes in Maharashtra to a common corpus of religious values. The consensus between the high and the low castes stemmed from the dissemination ofthe concept of advaita and the values of Hinduism through a folk literature which ranged from the compositions of Jnaneshwar to the abhangas of Namadeva and Tukarama. Besides narrowing the gulf between the elite and the plebeian castes, the literature of bhakti inspired the heroic figures of Maharashtra, and it evoked an ethos which has been equated with the spirit of nationalism by some modern historians of the region.
