Introducation of Maharashtra

Maharashtra is India’s third largest state in terms of area and second largest in terms of population after Uttar Pradesh. It is bordered by the states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Goa and the Union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli. The Arabian Sea makes up the state’s western coast. Mumbai (Bombay), India’s largest city, is the capital of Maharashtra.

Maharashtra was known as “Rashtra” in the Rig Veda, “Rashtrik” in Ashoka’s inscriptions, and “Maha rashtra” afterwards, as attested by Huein-Tsang and other travellers. The name appears to have been derived from “Maharashtri” in an old form of Prakrit, an ancient Indian language.

However, there are other theories put forward by different schools of thought. One possible derivation is believed to be the corruption of the term “Maha Kantara”, which means “Great Forest”[1]. Both these theories did not carry much weight, as can be seen from the name of Maharashtra.

The word Maharashtra, the land of the Marathi speaking people, appears to be derived from Maharashtri, an old form of Prakrit. Some believe that the word indicates that it was the land of the Mahars and the Rattas, while others consider it to be a corruption of the term ‘Maha Kantara’ (the Great Forest), a synonym for ‘Dandakaranya’.

Located in the north centre of Peninsular India, with a command of the Arabian Sea through its port of Mumbai, Maharashtra has a remarkable physical homogeneity, enforced by its underlying geology. The dominant physical trait of the state is its plateau character. The Maharashtra Desh is a plateau of plateaux, its western upturned rims rising to form the Sahyadri Range and its slopes gently descending towards the east and southeast. The major rivers and their master tributaries have carved the plateaux into alternating broad-river valleys and intervening higher lever interfluves, such as the Ahmednagar, Buldana, and Yavatmal plateaux.