Maharashtra has been home to farming communities for thousands of years. Chalcolithic villages at sites such as Inamgaon near Pune and Daimabad in the Godavari basin show that people grew crops, kept cattle and made painted pottery long before the rise of large kingdoms. In the 3rd century BCE parts of the region came under the Mauryan Empire, and an Ashokan edict has been found at Sopara near Mumbai.
From around the 2nd century BCE the Satavahanas ruled the Deccan from Pratishthana, the modern town of Paithan. Merchants and monks supported the building of Buddhist rock cut caves along trade routes through the Sahyadri hills. Karla, Bhaja, Nashik and the early caves of Ajanta belong to this period. Later, under the Vakatakas in the 5th century CE, Ajanta gained its world famous paintings. The Chalukyas and then the Rashtrakutas followed, and in the 8th century the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I began the Kailasa temple at Ellora, carved from a single mass of rock. Ajanta, Ellora and the Elephanta Caves near Mumbai are all UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
The Yadava dynasty ruled from Devagiri in the 12th and 13th centuries, a time when Marathi literature flourished through the saint poet Dnyaneshwar. In 1296 Alauddin Khalji raided Devagiri, and the Delhi Sultanate later took control of the fort. Muhammad bin Tughlaq renamed it Daulatabad and briefly tried to move his capital there. In 1347 the Bahmani Sultanate was founded in the Deccan, and it later split into several sultanates, including Ahmadnagar and Bijapur. The Mughals pushed into the Deccan in the 17th century, and the Bibi Ka Maqbara in Aurangabad dates from this time.
The 17th century also saw the rise of Shivaji, born at Shivneri fort near Junnar. He built an independent kingdom using a network of hill forts and coastal strongholds, and was crowned at Raigad in 1674. After his death the Marathas continued a long struggle against the Mughals, and in the 18th century the Peshwas, ruling from Shaniwar Wada in Pune, expanded Maratha power across much of India.
European powers arrived along the coast. The Portuguese held Vasai and other ports, and in 1661 the islands of Bombay passed to the English as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, and were soon handed to the East India Company. After a series of Anglo Maratha wars, the Peshwa's rule ended in 1818 and much of the region joined the Bombay Presidency. Maharashtra produced many reformers and leaders, including Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Gopal Krishna Gokhale and B. R. Ambedkar. The first session of the Indian National Congress was held in Bombay in 1885, and the Quit India Movement was launched there in August 1942.
After independence, the States Reorganisation Act of 1956 created a large bilingual Bombay State that included Vidarbha and Marathwada. The Samyukta Maharashtra movement campaigned for a separate Marathi speaking state, and on 1 May 1960 Bombay State was divided into Maharashtra and Gujarat. Bombay, officially renamed Mumbai in 1995, is the capital, while Nagpur serves as the second capital where the winter session of the legislature is held. Forts such as Raigad and Sinhagad, and the caves of Ajanta and Ellora, bring this history to life for visitors.
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Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY 2.5
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