He observes that Hatti-Karas are descendents of Patti-Janas, people who were settled in the south of Narmada River during the middle ages.
After the 12th century AD, the civil strife between the Yadavas of Devagiri and Halebidu (Hoysala's capital) split this land into two, into Marhätta and Karnätaka.
The Nashik Gazetteer states that in 246 BC "Maharatta" is noticed, as per the Mahavanso, as one of the ten places to which Ashoka sent an embassy,[3] and the word "Marhatta" (later used for the Marathas) is found in the Jain Maharashtri literature.
[9] In his book on the history of the Deccan, Persian historian Firishta (1560-1600) mentions, in his account of the conquest of the region under Alauddin Khilji, the province of Maharat (or Mherat) with its people "dependent on Daulatabad apparently considered to centre in Paithan or, as it is written, Mheropatan" as does the tenth century Arab geographer Al-Biruni, as Marhat country beginning seventy-two miles south of the Narmada[3] with Thane as its capital.
[4] In 1342, the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta referred to all the native inhabitants of Deogiri region as belonging collectively to the "tribe of Marhata", whose elite included both Brahmins and Warriors [10]