Marwari

The Marwari are the people of Marwar, the arid plain between the Aravalli Range and the Thar Desert in western Rajasthan, whose name means the land of death and thirst. Their tongue descends from Old Western Rajasthani, or Dingal, and is the leading language of the Rajasthani group. It is written in Devanagari and was long kept in the merchant Mahajani script, fitting Bania traders whose credit networks spanned India.

The Gurjara-Pratiharas ruled from Mandore in the early medieval period, and after the fall of Kannauj in 1194 the Rathore Rajputs migrated west: Rao Siha settled at Pali and Rao Jodha founded Jodhpur in 1459.

Akbar invaded in 1561 and after the death of Rao Chandrasen in 1581 Marwar passed under direct Mughal administration. When Aurangzeb annexed it in 1679 after Jaswant Singh's death, Durgadas Rathore led a thirty-one-year guerrilla resistance, and Jodhpur, Mewar and Jaipur formed a triple alliance to shake off Mughal rule. In 1818 Jodhpur became a British princely state in the Rajputana Agency.