Chapter VI: Part 6

MAR, JOHN ERSKINE, 2ND OR 7TH EARL OF (c. 1558-1634), Scottish politician, was the only son of the preceding. Together with King James VI. he was educated by George Buchanan. After attaining his majority he was nominally the guardian of the young king, who was about seven years his junior, and who lived with him at Stirling; but he was in reality a puppet in the hands of the regent, the earl of Morton; and he lost power and position when Morton was imprisoned. He was concerned in the seizure of James VI. in 1582 (a plot known as the raid of Ruthven); but when James escaped from his new custodians the earl fled into the west of Scotland. Then leaving his hiding-place Mar seized Stirling Castle, whereupon James marched against him, and he took refuge in England. Queen Elizabeth interceded for him, but in vain, and after some futile communications between the governments of England and Scotland Mar and his friends gathered an army, entered the presence of the king at Stirling, and were soon in supreme authority (1585). Mar was restored to his lands and titles. Henceforward he stood high in the royal favour; he became governor of Edinburgh Castle and was made tutor to James's son, Prince Henry, and for his second wife he married Mary, daughter of Esmé Stewart, duke of Lennox. In 1601 the earl was sent as envoy to London; here Elizabeth assured him that James should be her successor, and his mission was conducted with tact and prudence. Having joined the English privy council Mar was created Lord Cardross in 1610; he was a member of the Court of High Commission and was lord high treasurer of Scotland from 1615 to 1630. He died at Stirling on the 14th of December 1634. John (c. 1585-1654), his only son by his first wife, succeeded to his earldom; by his second wife he had five sons, among them being James (d. 1640), earl of Buchan; Henry (d. 1628), whose son David (d. 1671) succeeded to the barony of Cardross; and Charles, the ancestor of the earls of Rosslyn.

MAR, JOHN ERSKINE, 6TH OR 11TH EARL OF (1675-1732), Scottish Jacobite, was the eldest son of Charles, the 5th earl (1650-1689), from whom he inherited estates which were heavily loaded with debt. He was associated with the party favourable to the English government; he was one of the commissioners for the Union, and was made a Scottish secretary of state, becoming after the Union of 1707 a representative peer for Scotland, keeper of the signet and a privy councillor. In 1713 Mar was made an English secretary of state by the Tories, but he seems to have been equally ready to side with the Whigs, and in 1714 he assured the new king, George I., of his loyalty. However, like the other Tories, he was deprived of his office, and in August 1715 he went in disguise to Scotland and placed himself at the head of the adherents of James Edward, the Old Pretender. Meeting many Highland chieftains at Aboyne he avowed an earnest desire for the independence of Scotland, and at Braemar on the 6th of September 1715 he proclaimed James VIII. king of Scotland, England, France and Ireland. Gradually the forces under his command were augmented, but as a general he was a complete failure. Precious time was wasted at Perth, a feigned attack on Stirling was resultless, and he could give little assistance to the English Jacobites. At Sheriffmuir, where a battle was fought in November 1715, Mar's forces largely outnumbered those of his opponent, Archibald Campbell, afterwards 3rd duke of Argyll; but no bravery could atone for the signal incompetence displayed by the earl, and the fight was virtually a decisive defeat for the Jacobites. Mar then met James Edward at Fetteresso; the cause however was lost, and the prince and the earl fled to France. Mar sought to interest foreign powers in the cause of the Stuarts; but in the course of time he became thoroughly distrusted by the Jacobites. In 1721 he accepted a pension of £3500 a year from George I., and in the following year his name was freely mentioned in connexion with the trial of Bishop Atterbury, whom it was asserted that Mar had betrayed. This charge may perhaps be summarized as not proven. At the best his conduct was highly imprudent, and in 1724 he left the Pretender's service. His later years were spent in Paris and at Aix-la-Chapelle, where he died in May 1732.

Mar, who was known as "bobbing John," married for his second wife, Frances (d. 1761), daughter of the 1st duke of Kingston, and was thus a brother-in-law of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. He had been attainted in 1716, and his only son, Thomas, Lord Erskine, died childless in March 1766.

Mar's brother, JAMES ERSKINE (1679-1754), was educated as a lawyer and became lord justice clerk of the Court of Session and Lord Grange in 1710. He took no part in the rising of 1715, although there is little doubt that at times he was in communication with the Jacobites; but was rather known for his piety and for his sympathy with the Presbyterians. He is more famous, however, owing to the story of his wife's disappearance. This lady, Rachel Chicely, was a woman of disordered intellect; probably with reason she suspected her husband of infidelity, and after some years of unhappiness Grange arranged a plan for her seizure. In January 1732 she was conveyed with great secrecy from Edinburgh to the island of Hesker, thence to St Kilda, where she remained for about ten years, thence she was taken to Assynt in Sutherland, and finally to Skye. To complete the idea that she was dead her funeral was publicly celebrated, but she survived until May 1745. Meanwhile in 1734 Grange had resigned his judgeship and had become an English member of parliament; here he was a bitter opponent of Sir Robert Walpole. He died in London on the 20th of January 1754.

See the _Journal of the Earl of Mar_ (1716); R. Patten, _History of
the late Rebellion_ (1717); and A. Lang, _History of Scotland_, vol.
iv. (1907).

MARA, GERTRUD ELISABETH (1749-1833), German singer, was born at Cassel, the daughter of a poor musician named Schmeling. From him she learnt the violin, and while still a child her playing at the fair at Frankfort was so remarkable that money was collected to provide for her. She was helped by influential friends, and studied under Hillel at Leipzig for five years, proving to be endowed with a wonderful soprano voice. She began to sing in public in 1771, and was soon recognized as the greatest singer that Germany had produced. She was permanently engaged for the Prussian Court, but her marriage to a debauched violinist named Mara created difficulties, and in 1780 she was released. After singing at Vienna, Munich and elsewhere, she appeared in Paris in 1782, where her rivalry with the singer Todi developed into a regular faction. In 1784 she went to London, and continued to appear there with great success, with visits at intervals to Italy and to Paris till 1802, when for some years she retired to Russia. She visited England again in 1819, but then abandoned the stage. She went to Livonia, and died on the 20th of January 1833 at Revel.

MARABOUT (the French form of the Arab. _murabit_, "one who pickets his horse on a hostile frontier"; cf. Portug. _marabute_; Span. _morabito_), in Mahommedan religion a hermit or devotee. The word is derived from _ribat_, a fortified frontier station. To such stations pious men betook them to win religious merit in war against the infidel; their leisure was spent in devotion, and the habits of the convent superseded those of the camp (see M'G. De Slane in _Jour. As._, 1842, i. 168; Dozy, _Suppl._ i. 502). Thus _ribat_ came to mean a religious house or hospice (_zawiya_). The great sphere of the marabouts is North Africa. There it was that the community formed by Yahya b. Ibrahim and the doctor Abdullah developed into the conquering empire of the Murabits, or, as Christian writers call them, the ALMORAVIDES (q.v.), and there still, among the Berbers, the marabouts enjoy extraordinary influence, being esteemed as living saints and mediators. They are liberally supported by alms, direct all popular assemblies, and have a decisive voice in intertribal quarrels and all matters of consequence. On their death their sanctity is transferred to their tombs (also called marabouts), where chapels are erected and gifts and prayers offered. The marabouts took a prominent part in the resistance offered to the French by the Algerian Moslems; and they have been similarly active in politico-religious movements in Tunisia and Tripoli.

See L. Rinn, _Marabouts et Khouan_ (Algiers, 1884); and the article
DERVISH.

MARACAIBO, a large lake of western Venezuela, extending southward from the Gulf of Venezuela, into which it opens through a long neck, or strait, obstructed at its mouth by islands and bars, and having a large drainage basin bounded on the W. by the Eastern Cordillera, on the S.E. by the Cordillera de Merida, and on the E. by a low range of mountains extending N. by W. from Trujillo to the coast. The lake is roughly quadrangular in shape, and extends from the 9th to the 11th parallel of S. lat. and from the 71st to the 72nd meridian. It opens into the Gulf through 13 channels, the depth on the bar in the main channel ranging from 7 ft. at low water to 12 ft. at high water. Inside the bar the depth is about 30 ft., and the lake is navigable for vessels of large size. It receives the waters of many rivers, principally on its west and south sides, the largest of which are the Catatumbo and Zulia, Escalante, Chanudo, Ceniza, Sant'Ana, Negro, Apan and Palmar. The first three have navigable channels for river steamers. There are a number of small lakes near Lake Maracaibo's southern and western margins, the largest of which is the Laguna de Zulia. The heavy rainfall on the eastern slopes of the Eastern Cordillera, which is said to exceed 86 in. per annum, is responsible for the great volume of water discharged into the lake. The average annual precipitation over the whole basin is said to be 70 in. In the upper half of the lake the water is sweet, but below that, where the tidal influence is stronger, it becomes brackish. The only port of consequence on the lake is Maracaibo, but there are small ports at its upper end which are in direct communication with the inland cities of Trujillo, Merida and San Cristobal. The Catatumbo River, which enters from the west near the north end of the lake, and its principal tributary, the Zulia, are navigable as far as Villamizar, in Colombia, and afford an excellent transportation route for the coffee and other products of Santander.

MARACAIBO (sometimes MARACAYBO), a city and seaport of Venezuela and capital of the state of Zulia (formerly Maracaibo), on the west shore of the broad channel or neck which connects Lake Maracaibo with the Gulf of Venezuela, or Maracaibo, about 25 m. from the mouth of the channel opening into the latter. Pop. (1889), 34,284; (1905), 49,817; there is a considerable German element in the vicinity. The best residential suburb, Haticos, extends along the lake shore toward the south. The city is provided with tramways, telephone service and electric lighting, but the water supply and drainage are inferior. The most important buildings are the executive's residence, the legislative chambers, the municipal hall, the Baralt theatre, the prison, the market, a hospital and six churches. The city also has a school of arts, a public library, and a public garden. In colonial times Maracaibo had a famous Jesuits' college (now gone) and was one of the educational centres of Spanish America; the city now has a national college and a nautical school. The industries include shipbuilding, and the manufacture of saddlery and other leather products, bricks and tile, rum, beer, chocolate and coco-nut oil. Maracaibo is chiefly known, however, as one of the principal commercial centres and shipping ports on the northern coast of South America. The bar at the entrance to Maracaibo channel does not admit vessels drawing more than 12 ft., but there is a depth of 30 ft. inside and near the city. Steam communication is maintained on the Catatumbo and Zulia rivers to Villamizar, and on the Escalante to Santa Cruz. The principal exports from Maracaibo are coffee, hides and skins, cabinet and dye-woods, cocoa, and mangrove bark, to which may be added dividivi, sugar, copaiba, gamela and hemp straw for paper-making, and fruits. In 1906, 26% of the coffee exports was of Colombian origin.

Maracaibo was founded in 1571 by Alonso Pacheco, who gave it the name Nueva Zamora. Up to 1668 the entrepôt for the inland settlements was a station named Gibraltar at the head of the lake, but the destruction of that station by pirates in that year transferred this valuable trade to Maracaibo. The city did not figure actively in the War of Independence until 1821 (Jan. 28), when the province declared its independence and sought an alliance with Colombia. This brought to an end the armistice between Bolívar and Morillo, and thenceforward the city experienced all the changing fortunes of war until its final capture by the revolutionists in 1823.

MARAGHA, a town of Persia in the province of Azerbaijan, on the Safi River, in 37° 23´ N., 46° 16´ E., 80 m. from Tabriz. Pop. about 16,000. It is pleasantly situated in a narrow valley running nearly north and south at the eastern extremity of a well-cultivated plain opening towards Lake Urmia, which lies 18 m. to the west. The town is encompassed by a high wall ruined in many places, and has four gates. Two stone bridges in good condition, said to have been constructed during the reign of Hulaku Khan (1256-1265), and since then several times repaired, lead over the Safi River on the western side of the town. The place is surrounded by extensive vineyards and orchards, all well watered by canals led from the river, and producing great quantities of fruit for exportation to Russia. On a hill west of the town are the remains of a famous observatory (_rasad_) constructed under the direction of the great astronomer Nasr-ud-din of Tus. The hills west of the town consist of horizontal strata of sandstone covered with irregular pieces of basalt and the top of the hill on which the observatory stood was made level by taking away the basalt. The building, which no doubt served as a citadel as well, enclosed a space of 380 yds. by 150, and the foundations of the walls were 4½ to 5 ft. in thickness. The marble, which is known throughout Persia as Maragha marble, is a travertine obtained at the village of Dashkesen (Turkish for "stone-breakers") about 30 m. north-west from Maragha. It is deposited from water, which bubbles up from a number of springs in the form of horizontal layers, which at first are thin crusts and can easily be broken, but gradually solidify and harden into blocks with a thickness of 7 to 8 in. It is a singularly beautiful substance, being of pink, greenish, or milk-white colour, streaked with reddish, copper-coloured veins. An analysis of the marble gave the following result: calcium carbonate, 90.93; magnesium, .75; iron, 1.37; manganese, 4.34; calcium sulphate, 2.30; calcium phosphate, .24 (R. T. Günther, _Geog. Journ._ xiv. 517).

MARANHÃO, or MARANHAM (Span. _Marañon_, the name given to the upper Amazon), a northern state of Brazil, bounded N. by the Atlantic, E. and S.E. by Piauhy, S.W. and W. by Goyaz and Pará. Area, 177,569 sq. m.; pop. (1890), 430,854; (1900), 499,308. The coastal zone and the north-west corner of the state belong to the Amazon valley region, being a heavily forested plain traversed by numerous rivers. The eastern and southern parts, however, belong to the lower terraces of the great Brazilian plateau, broken by eroded river-courses between which are high open plains. There are no true mountain ranges in Maranhão, those indicated on the maps being only plateau escarpments marking either its northern margin or the outlines of river valleys. The climate is hot, and the year is divided into a wet and dry season, extreme humidity being characteristic of the former. The heat, however, is greatly modified on the coast by the south-east trade winds, and the climate is generally considered healthy, though beri-beri and eruptive diseases are common on the coast. The coast itself is broken and dangerous, there being many small indentations, which are usually masked by islands or shoals. The largest of these are the Bay of Tury-assú, facing which is the island of São João, and several others of small size, and the contiguous bays of São Marcos and São José, between which is the large island of Maranhão. The rivers of the state all flow northward to the Atlantic and a majority of them have navigable channels. The Parnahyba forms the eastern boundary of Maranhão, but it has one large tributary, the Balsas, entirely within the state. A part of the western boundary is formed by the Tocantins, and another part by the Gurupy, which separates the state from Pará. The principal rivers of the state are the Maracassumé and Tury-assú, the Mearim and its larger tributaries (the Pindaré, Grajahú, Flôres and Corda) which discharge into the Bay of São Marcos, and the Itapicurú and Monim which discharge into the Bay of São José. Like the Amazon, the Mearim has a _pororoca_ or bore in its lower channel, which greatly interferes with navigation. There are a number of small lakes in the state, some of which are, apparently, merely reservoirs for the annual floods of the rainy season.

The principal industries of Maranhão are agricultural, the river valleys and coastal zone being highly fertile and being devoted to the cultivation of sugar-cane, cotton, rice, coffee, tobacco, mandioca and a great variety of fruits. The southern highlands, however, are devoted to stock-raising, which was once an important industry. Troublesome insects, vampire bats, and the failure to introduce new blood into the degenerated herds, are responsible for its decline. Agriculture has also greatly declined, the state producing for export only a comparatively small quantity of cotton, rice, sugar and _aguardiente_. Besides São Luiz, the capital of the state, the principal towns, with the population of their municipal districts in 1890, are: Caxias (19,443), Alcantara (4730), Carolina (7266), Grajahú (11,704), Tury-assú (8983) and Viana (9965).

The coast of Maranhão was first discovered by Pinzon in 1500, but it was included in the Portuguese grant of captaincies in 1534. The first European settlement, however, was made by a French trading expedition under Jacques Riffault, of Dieppe, in 1594, who lost two of his three vessels in the vicinity of the island of Maranhão, and left a part of his men on that island when he returned home. Subsequently Daniel de la Rivardière was sent to report on the place, and was then commissioned by the French crown to found a colony on the island; this was done in 1612. The French were expelled by the Portuguese in 1615, and the Dutch held the island from 1641 to 1644. In 1621 Ceará, Maranhão and Pará were united and called the "Estado do Maranhão," which was made independent of the southern captaincies. Ceará was subsequently detached, but the "state" of Maranhão remained independent until 1774, when it again became subject to the colonial administration of Brazil. Maranhão did not join in the declaration of independence of 1822, but in the following year the Portuguese were driven out by Admiral Lord Cochrane and the province became a part of the new empire of Brazil.

MARANO (accursed or banned), a term applied to Jewish Christians in Spain. Converted to Roman Catholicism under compulsion, these "New Christians" often continued to observe Jewish rites in their homes, as the Inquisition records attest. It was in fact largely due to the Maranos that the Spanish Inquisition was founded. The Maranos made rapid strides in prosperity, and "accumulated honours, wealth and popular hatred" (Lea, _History of the Spanish Inquisition_, i. 125). This was one of the causes that led to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. Maranos emigrated to various countries, but many remained in the Peninsula. Subsequently distinguished individuals left home for more tolerant lands. The Jewish community in London was refounded by Maranos in the first half of the 17th century. Hamburg commerce, too, owed much to the enterprise of Portuguese Maranos. In Amsterdam many Maranos found asylum; Spinoza was descended from such a family. There are still remnants of Marano families in Portugal.

See Lea, _loc. cit._ and elsewhere; see index s.v. "New Christian";
Graetz, _History of the Jews_, Eng. trans. see index s.v. "Marranos";
M. Kayserling, in _Jewish Encyclopedia_, viii. 318 seq.; and for the
present day _Jewish Quarterly Review_, xv. 251 seq. (I. A.)

MARASH (anc. _Germanicia-Marasion_), the chief town of a sanjak of the same name in the Aleppo vilayet, altitude 2600 ft. situated E. of the Jihan river, at the foot of Mt Taurus. The sanjak lies almost wholly in Mt Taurus, and includes the Armenian town of Zeitun. Marash is prosperous, and has a large trade in Kurd carpets and embroideries. The climate is good, except in summer. Of the population (50,000) about half are Turkish-speaking Armenians. There are a college, church and schools belonging to the American mission, a native Protestant church and a Jesuit establishment. The site, which lies near the mouths of the three main passes over the eastern Taurus--viz. those descending from Geuksun (Cocysus), Albistan-Yarpuz (Arabissus), and Malatia (Melitene)--is shown to have had early importance, not only by the occurrence of _Marasi_ in Assyrian inscriptions, but by the discovery of several "Hittite" monuments on the spot. These, said to have been unearthed, for the most part, near the Kirk Geuz spring above the modern town, are now in Constantinople and America, and include an inscribed lion, once built into the wall of the citadel known in the middle ages as al-Marwani, and several _stelae_. No more is known of the place until it appears as Germanicia-Caesarea, striking imperial coins with the head of L. Verus (middle of 2nd cent. A.D.). The identification of Marash with Germanicia has been disputed, but successfully defended by Sir W. M. Ramsay; and it is borne out by the Armenian name _Kermanig_, which has been given to the place since at least the 12th century. Before the Roman period Marash doubtless shared the fortunes of the Seleucid kingdom of Commagene. _Germanicia-Marasion_ played a great part in Byzantine border warfare: Heraclius was there in A.D. 640; but before 700 it had passed into Saracen hands and been rebuilt by the caliph Moawiya. During the 8th and 9th centuries, when the direct pass from Cocysus came into military use, Marasion (the older name had returned into general use) was often the Byzantine objective and was more than once retaken; but after 770, when Mansur incorporated it in "Palestine" it remained definitely in Moslem power and was refortified by Harun-al-Rashid. It was seized by the crusaders after their march across Mt Taurus, A.D. 1097, became an important town of Lesser Armenia and was taken by the Seljuks in 1147. In the 16th century it was added to the Osmanli Empire by Selim I. Marash passed with the rest of Syria into Egyptian hands in 1832, and in 1839 received fugitives from the defeat of Nizib, among whom was Moltke. Ibrahim Pasha was encamped near it when directed by his father, at the bidding of the powers, to stay his further advance. Since its reversion to Ottoman power (1840) the history of Marash has been varied only by Armenian troubles, largely connected with the fortunes of Zeitun, for the reduction of which place it has more than once been used as a base. There was less disturbance there in 1895-1896 than in other north Syrian towns. (D. G. H.)

MARAT, JEAN PAUL (1743-1793), French revolutionary leader, eldest child of Jean Paul Marat, a native of Cagliari in Sardinia, and Louise Cabrol of Geneva, was born at Boudry, in the principality of Neuchâtel, on the 24th of May 1743. His father was a designer, who had abandoned his country and his religion, and married a Swiss Protestant. On his mother's death in 1759 Marat set out on his travels, and spent two years at Bordeaux in the study of medicine, whence he moved to Paris, where he made use of his knowledge of his two favourite sciences, optics and electricity, to subdue an obstinate disease of the eyes. After some years in Paris he went to Holland, and then on to London, where he practised his profession. In 1773 he made his first appearance as an author with a _Philosophical Essay on Man_. The book shows a wonderful knowledge of English, French, German, Italian and Spanish philosophers, and directly attacks Helvetius, who had in his _De l'esprit_ declared a knowledge of science unnecessary for a philosopher. Marat declares that physiology alone can solve the problems of the connexion between soul and body, and proposes the existence of a nervous fluid as the true solution. In 1774 he published _The Chains of Slavery_, which was intended to influence constituencies to return popular members, and reject the king's friends. Its author declared later that it procured him an honorary membership of the patriotic societies of Carlisle, Berwick and Newcastle. He remained devoted to his profession, and in 1775 published in London a little _Essay on Gleets_, and in Amsterdam a French translation of the first two volumes of his _Essay on Man_. In this year he visited Edinburgh, and on the recommendation of certain Edinburgh physicians was made an M. D. of St Andrews. On his return to London he published an _Enquiry into the Nature, Cause, and Cure of a Singular Disease of the Eyes_, with a dedication to the Royal Society. In the same year there appeared the third volume of the French edition of the _Essay on Man_, which reached Ferney, and exasperated Voltaire, by its onslaught on Helvetius, into a sharp attack which only made the young author more conspicuous. His fame as a clever doctor was now great, and on the 24th of June 1777, the comte d'Artois, afterwards Charles X. of France, made him by brevet physician to his guards with 2000 livres a year and allowances.

Marat was soon in great request as a court doctor among the aristocracy; and even Brissot, in his _Mémoires_, admits his influence in the scientific world of Paris. The next years were much occupied with scientific work, especially the study of heat, light and electricity, on which he presented memoirs to the Académie des Sciences, but the academicians were horrified at his temerity in differing from Newton, and, though acknowledging his industry, would not receive him among them. His experiments greatly interested Benjamin Franklin, who used to visit him and Goethe always regarded his rejection by the academy as a glaring instance of scientific despotism. In 1780 he had published at Neuchâtel a _Plan de législation criminelle_, founded on the principles of Beccaria. In April 1786 he resigned his court appointment. The results of his leisure were in 1787 a new translation of Newton's _Optics_, and in 1788 his _Mémoires académiques, ou nouvelles découvertes sur la lumière_.

His scientific life was now over, his political life was to begin; in the notoriety of that political life his great scientific and philosophical knowledge was to be forgotten, the high position he had given up denied, and he himself scoffed at as an ignorant charlatan, who had sold quack medicines about the streets of Paris, and been glad to earn a few sous in the stables of the comte d'Artois. In 1788 the notables had met, and advised the assembling of the states-general. The elections were the cause of a flood of pamphlets, of which one, _Offrande à la patrie_, was by Marat, and, though now forgotten, dwelt on much the same points as the famous brochure of the Abbé Siéyès: _Qu'est-ce que le tiers état?_ When the states-general met, Marat's interest was as great as ever, and in June 1789 he published a supplement to his _Offrande_, followed in July by _La constitution_, in which he embodies his idea of a constitution for France, and in September by his _Tableau des vices de la constitution d'Angleterre_, which he presented to the Assembly. The latter alone deserves remark. The Assembly was at this time full of anglomaniacs, who desired to establish in France a constitution similar to that of England. Marat had seen that England was at this time being ruled by an oligarchy using the forms of liberty, which, while pretending to represent the country, was really being gradually mastered by the royal power. His heart was now all in politics; and he decided to start a paper. At first appeared a single number of the _Moniteur patriote_, followed on the 12th of September by the first number of the _Publiciste parisien_, which on the 16th of September took the title of _L'Ami du peuple_ and which he edited, with some interruptions, until the 21st of September 1792.

The life of Marat now becomes part of the history of the French Revolution. From the beginning to the end he stood alone. He was never attached to any party; the tone of his mind was to suspect whoever was in power. About his paper, the incarnation of himself, the first thing to be said is that the man always meant what he said; no poverty, no misery or persecution, could keep him quiet; he was perpetually crying, "Nous sommes trahis." Whoever suspected any one had only to denounce him to the _Ami du peuple_, and the denounced was never let alone till he was proved innocent or guilty. Marat began by attacking the most powerful bodies in Paris--the Constituent Assembly, the ministers, the corps municipal, and the court of the Châtelet. Denounced and arrested, he was imprisoned from the 8th of October to the 5th of November 1789. A second time, owing to his violent campaign against Lafayette, he narrowly escaped arrest and had to flee to London (Jan. 1790). There he wrote his _Dénonciation contre Necker_, and in May dared to return to Paris and continue the _Ami du peuple_. He was embittered by persecution, and continued his vehement attacks against all in power, and at last, after the day of the Champs du Mars (July 17, 1790), against the king himself. All this time he was in hiding in cellars and sewers, where he was attacked by a horrible skin disease, tended only by the woman Simonne Evrard, who remained true to him. The end of the Constituent Assembly he heard of with joy and with bright hopes for the future, soon dashed by the behaviour of the Legislative Assembly. When almost despairing, in December 1791, he fled once more to London, where he wrote his _Ecole du citoyen_. In April 1792, summoned again by the Cordeliers' Club, he returned to Paris, and published No. 627 of the _Ami_. The war was now the question, and Marat saw clearly that it was to serve the purposes of the Royalists and the Girondins, who thought of themselves alone. Again denounced, Marat had to remain in hiding until the 10th of August. The early days of the war being unsuccessful, the proclamation of the duke of Brunswick excited all hearts; who could go to save France on the frontiers and leave Paris in the hands of his enemies? Marat, like Danton, foresaw the massacres of September. After the events of the 10th of August he took his seat at the commune, and demanded a tribunal to try the Royalists in prison. No tribunal was formed, and the massacres in the prisons were the inevitable result. In the elections to the Convention, Marat was elected seventh out of the twenty-four deputies for Paris, and for the first time took his seat in an assembly of the nation. At the declaration of the republic, he closed his _Ami du peuple_, and commenced, on the 25th, a new paper, the _Journal de la république française_, which was to contain his sentiments as its predecessor had done, and to be always on the watch. In the Assembly Marat had no party; he would always suspect and oppose the powerful, refuse power for himself. After the battle of Valmy, Dumouriez was the greatest man in France; he could almost have restored the monarchy; yet Marat did not fear to denounce him in placards as a traitor.

His unpopularity in the Assembly was extreme, yet he insisted on speaking on the question of the king's trial, declared it unfair to accuse Louis for anything anterior to his acceptance of _the_ constitution, and though implacable towards the king, as the one man who must die for the people's good, he would not allow Malesherbes, the king's counsel, to be attacked in his paper, and speaks of him as a "sage et respectable vieillard." The king dead, the months from January to May 1793 were spent in an unrelenting struggle between Marat and the Girondins. Marat despised the ruling party because they had suffered nothing for the republic, because they talked too much of their feelings and their antique virtue, because they had for their own virtues plunged the country into war; while the Girondins hated Marat as representative of that rough red republicanism which would not yield itself to a Roman republic, with themselves for tribunes, orators and generals. The Girondins conquered at first in the Convention, and ordered that Marat should be tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal. But their victory ruined them, for on the 24th of April Marat was acquitted, and returned to the Convention with the people at his back. The fall of the Girondins on the 31st of May was a triumph for Marat. But it was his last. The skin disease he had contracted in the subterranean haunts was rapidly closing his life; he could only ease his pain by sitting in a warm bath, where he wrote his journal, and accused the Girondins, who were trying to raise France against Paris. Sitting thus on the 13th of July he heard in the evening a young woman begging to be admitted to see him, saying that she brought news from Caen, where the escaped Girondins were trying to rouse Normandy. He ordered her to be admitted, asked her the names of the deputies then at Caen, and, after writing their names, said, "They shall be soon guillotined," when the young girl, whose name was Charlotte Corday (q.v.), stabbed him to the heart.

His death caused a great commotion at Paris. The Convention attended his funeral, and placed his bust in the hall where it held its sessions. Louis David painted "Marat Assassinated," and a veritable cult was rendered to the Friend of the People, whose ashes were transferred to the Panthéon with great pomp on the 21st of September 1794--to be cast out again in virtue of the decree of the 8th of February 1795.

Marat's name was long an object of execration on account of his insistence on the death penalty. He stands in history as a bloodthirsty monster, yet in judging him one must remember the persecutions he endured and the terrible disease from which he suffered.

Besides the works mentioned above, Marat wrote: _Recherches physiques
sur l'électricité, &c._ (1782); _Recherches sur l'électricité
médicale_ (1783); _Notions élémentaires d'optique_ (1764); _Lettres de
l'observateur Bon Sens à M. de M. ... sur la fatale catastrophe des
infortunés Pilatre de Rozier et Romain, les aéronautes et
l'aérostation_ (1785); _Observations de M. l'amateur Avec à M. l'abbé
Sans ... &c._, (1785); _Éloge de Montesquieu_ (1785), published 1883
by M. de Bresetz; _Les Charlatans modernes, ou lettres sur le
charlatanisme académique_ (1791); _Les Aventures du comte Potowski_
(published in 1847 by Paul Lacroix, the "bibliophile Jacob"); _Lettres
polonaises_ (unpublished). Marat's works were published by A.
Vermorel, _Oeuvres de J. P. Marat, l'ami du peuple, recueillies et
annotées_ (1869). Two of his tracts, (1) _On Gleets_, (2) _A Disease
of the Eyes_, were reprinted, ed. J. B. Bailey, in 1891.

See A. Vermorel, _Jean Paul Marat_ (1880); François Chévremont,
_Marat: esprit politique, accomp. de sa vie_ (2 vols., 1880); Auguste
Cabanès, _Marat inconnu_ (1891); A. Bougeait, _Marat, l'ami du peuple_
(2 vols., 1865); M. Tourneux, _Bibliographie de l'histoire de Paris
pendant la révolution française_ (vol. ii., 1894; vol. iv., 1906), and
E. B. Bax, J. P. Marat (1900). _The Correspondance de Marat_ has been
edited with notes by C. Villay (1908). (R. A.*)

MARATHI (properly _Marathi_),[1] the name of an important Indo-Aryan language spoken in western and central India. In 1901 the number of speakers was 18,237,899, or about the same as the population of Spain. Marathi occupies an irregular triangular area of approximately 100,000 sq.m., having its apex about the district of Balaghat in the Central Provinces, and for its base the western coast of the peninsula from Daman on the Gulf of Cambay in the north to Karwar on the open Arabian Sea in the south. It covers parts of two provinces of British India--Bombay and the Central Provinces (including Berar)--with numerous settlers in Central India and Madras, and is also the principal language of Portuguese India and of the north-western portion of His Highness the Nizam's dominions. The standard form of speech is that of Poona in Bombay, and, in its various dialects it covers the larger part of that province, in which it is the vernacular of more than eight and a half millions of people.

As explained in the article INDO-ARYAN LANGUAGES, there were in ancient times two main groups of these forms of speech--one, the language of the Midland, spoken in the country near the Gangetic Doab, and the other, the languages of the so-called "Outer Band," containing the Midland on three sides, west, east and south. The country to the south of the Midland, in which members of this Outer group of languages were formerly spoken, included the modern Rajputana and Gujarat, and extended to the basin of the river Nerbudda, being bounded on the south by the Vindhya hills. In the course of time the population of the Midland expanded, and gradually occupied this tract, reaching the sea in Gujarat. The language of the Outer Band was thus forced farther afield. Its speakers crossed the Vindhyas and settled in the central plateau of the Deccan and on the Konkan coast. Here they came into contact with speakers of the Dravidian languages of southern India. As happened elsewhere in India, they retained their own Aryan tongue, and gradually through the influence of their superior civilization imposed it upon the aborigines, so that all the inhabitants of this tract became the ancestors of the speakers of modern Marathi.

In Rajputana and Gujarat the language (see GUJARAT) is to a certain extent mixed. Near the original Midland there are few traces of the Outer language, but as we go farther and farther away from that centre we find, as might be expected, the influence of the Midland language becoming weaker and weaker, and traces of the Outer language becoming more and more evident, until in Gujarati we recognize several important survivals of the old language once spoken by the earlier Aryan inhabitants.

_Dialects._--Besides the standard form of speech, there is only one real dialect of Marathi, viz. Konkani (Konkani), spoken in the country near Goa. There are also several local varieties, and we may conveniently distinguish between the Marathi of the Deccan, that of the Central Provinces (including Berar), and that of the northern and central Konkan. In the southern part of the district of Ratnagiri this latter Konkani variety of Marathi gradually merges into the true Konkani dialect through a number of intermediate forms of speech. There are also several broken jargones, based upon Marathi, employed by aboriginal tribes surviving in the hill country.

_Relations with other Indo-Aryan Languages._--Marathi has to its north, in order from west to east, Gujarati, Rajasthani, Western Hindi and Eastern Hindi. To its east and south it has the Dravidian languages, Gondi, Telugu and Kanarese. Elsewhere in India Aryan languages gradually fade away into each other, so that it is impossible to fix any definite boundary line between them. But this is not the case with Marathi. It does not merge into any of the cognate neighbouring forms of speech, but possesses a distinct linguistic frontier. A native writer[2] says: "The Gujarati language agrees very closely with the languages of the countries lying to the north of it, because the Gujarati people came from the north. If a native of Delhi, Ajmere, Marwar, Mewar, Jaipur, &c., comes into Gujarat, the Gujarati people find no difficulty in understanding his language. But it is very wonderful that when people from countries bordering Gujarat on the south, as the Konkan, Maharashtra, &c. (i.e. people speaking Marathi) come to Gujarat, the Gujarati people do not in the least comprehend what they say." This isolated character of Marathi is partly due to the barrier of the Vindhya range which lies to its north, and partly to the fact that none of the northern languages belongs now to the Outer Band, but are in more or less close relationship to the language of the Midland. There was no common ground either physical or linguistic, upon which the colliding forms of speech could meet on equal terms. Eastern Hindi is more closely related to Marathi than the others, and in its case, in its bordering dialects, we do find a few traces of the influence of Marathi--traces which are part of the essence of the language, and not mere borrowed waifs floating on the top of a sea of alien speech and not absorbed by it.

_Written Character._--Marathi books are generally printed in the well-known Nagari character (see SANSKRIT), and this is also used to a great extent in private transactions and correspondence. In the Maratha country it is known as the _Balbodh_ ("teachable to children," i.e. "easy") character. A cursive form of Nagari called _Modi_, or "twisted," is also employed as a handwriting. It is said to have been invented in the 17th century by Balaji Avaji, the secretary of the celebrated Sivaji. Its chief merit is that each word can be written as a whole without lifting the pen from the paper, a feat which is impossible in the case of Nagari.[3]

_Origin of the Language._--The word "Marathi" signifies (the language) of the Maratha country. It is the modern form of the Sanskrit _Maharastri_, just as "Maratha" represents the old _Maha-rastra_, or Great Kingdom. _Maharastri_ was the name given by Sanskrit writers to the particular form of Prakrit spoken in Maharastra, the great Aryan kingdom extending southwards from the Vindhya range to the Kistna, broadly corresponding to the southern part of the Bombay Presidency and to the state of Hyderabad. As pointed out in the article PRAKRIT this Maharastri early obtained literary pre-eminence in India, and became the form of Prakrit employed as the language not only of lyric poetry but also of the formal epic (_kavya_). Dramatic works were composed in it, and it was the vehicle of the non-canonical scriptures of the Jaina religion. The oldest work in the language of which we have any knowledge is the _Sattasai_, or Seven Centuries of verses, compiled at Pratisthana, on the Godavari, the capital of King Hala, at some time between the 3rd and 7th centuries A.D. Pratisthana is the modern Paithan in the Aurangabad district of Hyderabad, and that city was for long famous as a centre of literary composition. In later times the political centre of gravity was changed to Poona, the language of which district is now accepted as the standard of the best Marathi.

_General Character of the Language._--In the following account of the main features of Marathi, the reader is presumed to be familiar with the leading facts stated in the articles INDO-ARYAN LANGUAGES and PRAKRIT. In the Prakrit stage of the Indo-Aryan languages we can divide the Prakrits into two well-defined groups, an Inner, Sauraseni and its connected dialects on the one hand, and an Outer, Maharastri, Ardhamagadhi, and Magadhi with their connected dialects on the other. These two groups differed in their phonetic laws, in their systems of declension and conjugation, in vocabulary, and in general character.[4] In regard to the last point reference may be made to the frequent use of meaningless suffixes, such as -_alla_, -_illa_, -_ulla_, &c., which can be added, almost _ad libitum_ to any noun, adjective or particle in Maharastri and Ardhamagadhi, but which are hardly ever met in Sauraseni. These give rise to numerous secondary forms of words, used, it might be said, in a spirit of playfulness, which give a distinct flavour to the whole language. Similarly the late Mr Beames (_Comparative Grammar_, i. 103) well describes Marathi as possessing "a very decided individuality, a type quite its own, arising from its comparative isolation for so many centuries." Elsewhere (p. 38) he uses language which would easily well apply to Maharastri Prakrit when he says, "Marathi is one of those languages which we may call playful--it delights in all sorts of jingling formations, and has struck out a larger quantity of secondary and tertiary words, diminutives, and the like, than any of the cognate tongues," and again (p. 52):--

"In Marathi we see the results of the Pandit's file applied to a form
of speech originally possessed of much natural wildness and licence.
The hedgerows have been pruned and the wild briars and roses trained
into order. It is a copious and beautiful language, second only to
Hindi. It has three genders, and the same elaborate preparation of the
base as Sindhi, and, owing to the great corruption which has taken
place in its terminations, the difficulty of determining the gender of
nouns is as great in Marathi as in German. In fact, if we were to
institute a parallel in this respect, we might appropriately describe
Hindi as the English, Marathi as the German of the Indian group--Hindi
having cast aside whatever could possibly be dispensed with, Marathi
having retained whatever has been spared by the action of time. To an
Englishman Hindi commends itself by its absence of form, and the
positional structure of its sentences resulting therefrom; to our
High-German cousins the Marathi, with its fuller array of genders,
terminations, and inflexions, would probably seem the completer and
finer language."

In the article PRAKRIT it is explained that the literary Prakrits were not the direct parents of the modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars. Each Prakrit had first to pass through an intermediate stage--that of the Apabhramsa--before it took the form current at the present day. While we know a good deal about Maharastri and very little about Sauraseni Prakrit, the case is reversed in regard to their respective Apabhramsas. The Saurasena Apabhramsa is the only one concerning which we have definite information. Although it would be quite possible to reason from analogy, and thus to obtain what would be the corresponding forms of Maharastra Apabhramsa, we should often be travelling upon insecure ground, and it is therefore advisable to compare Marathi, not with the Apabhramsa from which it is immediately derived, but with its grandmother, Maharastri Prakrit. We shall adopt this course, so far as possible, in the following pages.

_Vocabulary._--In the article INDO-ARYAN LANGUAGES it is explained
that, allowing for phonetic development, the vocabulary of Sauraseni
Prakrit was the same as that of Sanskrit, but that the farther we go
from the Midland, the more examples we meet of a new class of words,
the so-called _desyas_, descendants of the old Primary Prakrits spoken
outside the Midland, and strange to Sanskrit. Maharastri Prakrit, the
most independent of the Outer languages, was distinguished by the
large proportion of these _desyas_ found in its vocabulary, and the
same is consequently the case in Marathi. The Brahmins of the Maratha
country have always had a great reputation for learning, and their
efforts to create a literary language out of their vernacular took, as
in other parts of India, the direction of borrowing _tatsamas_ from
Sanskrit, to lend what they considered to be dignity to their
sentences. But the richness of the language in _desya_ words has often
rendered such borrowing unnecessary, and has saved Marathi, although
the proportion of _tatsamas_ to _tadbhavas_[5] in the language is more
than sufficiently high, from the fate of the Pandit-ridden literary
Bengali, in which 80 to 90% of the vocabulary is pure Sanskrit. There
is indeed a tradition of stylistic chastity in the Maratha country
from the earliest times, and even Sanskrit writers contrasted the
simple elegance of the Deccan (or _Vaidarbhi_) style with the flowery
complexity of eastern India.

The proportion of Persian and, through Persian, of Arabic words in the
Marathi vocabulary is comparatively low, when compared with, say,
Hindostani. The reason is, firstly, the predominance in the literary
world of these learned Brahmins, and, secondly, the fact that the
Maratha country was not conquered by the Mussulmans till a fairly late
period, nor was it so thoroughly occupied by them as were Sind, the
Punjab, and the Gangetic valley.

_Phonetics._[6]--In the standard dialect the vowels are the same as in
Sanskrit, but _r_ and _l_ only appear in words borrowed directly from
that language (_tatsamas_). Final short vowels (_a_, _i_ and _u_) have
all disappeared in prose pronunciation, except in a few local
dialects, and final _i_ and _u_ are not even written. On the other
hand, in the Nagari character, the non-pronunciation of a final _a_ is
not indicated. After an accented syllable a medial _a_ is pronounced
very lightly, even when the accent is not the main accent of the word.
Thus, if we indicate the main accent by ', and subsidiary accents
(equivalent to the Hebrew _methegh_) by `, then the word _kárawat_, a
saw, is pronounced _kár^awat_; and _kàlakálane_, to be agitated, is
pronounced _kàl^akál^an_e. In Konkani the vowel _a_ assumes the sound
of o in "hot," a sound which is also heard in the language of Bengal.
In dialectic speech _e_ is often interchangeable with short or long
_a_, so that the standard _sangit^al_e, it was said, may appear as
_sangit^ala_ or _sangit^ala_. The vowels _e_ and _o_ are apparently
always long in the standard dialect, thus following Sanskrit; but in
Konkani there is a short and a long form of each vowel. Very probably,
although the distinction is not observed in writing, and has not been
noticed by native scholars, these vowels are also pronounced short in
the standard dialect under the circumstances to be now described. When
a long _a_, _i_ or _u_ precedes an accented syllable it is usually
shortened. In the case of _a_ the shortening is not indicated by the
spelling, but the written long _a_ is pronounced short like the _a_ in
the Italian _ballo_. Thus, the dative of _pik_, a ripe crop, is
_pikas_, and that of _hat_, a hand, is _hatas_, pronounced _hatas_.
Almost the only compound consonants which survived in the Prakrit
stage were double letters, and in M. these are usually simplified, the
preceding vowel being lengthened in compensation. Thus, the Prakrit
_kanno_ becomes _kan_, an ear; Pr. _bhikkha_ becomes _bhik_, alms; and
Pr. _putto_ becomes _put_, a son. In the Pisaca (see INDO-ARYAN
LANGUAGES) and other languages of north-western India it is not usual
to lengthen the vowel in compensation, and the same tendency is
observable in Konkani, which, it may be remarked, appears to contain
many relics of the old Prakrit (Saurastri) spoken in the Gujarat
country before the invasion from the Midland. Thus, in Konkani, we
have _put_ as well as _put_, while the word corresponding to the Pr.
_ekko_, one, is _ek_ as well as the standard _ek_.