Deshastha Brahmin is a Hindu Brahmin subcaste mainly from the Indian state of Maharashtra and North Karnataka. Other than these states, according to authors K. S. Singh, Gregory Naik and Pran Nath Chopra, Deshastha Brahmins are also concentrated in the states of Telangana (which was earlier part of Hyderabad State and Berar Division), Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh (Which was earlier part of Central Provinces and Berar) Historian Pran Nath Chopra and journalist Pritish Nandy say, "Most of the well-known saints from Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh were Deshastha Brahmins". The mother tongue of Deshastha Brahmins is either Marathi, Kannada or Telugu.

Bhāskara, also known as Bhāskarāchārya, and as Bhāskara II to avoid confusion with the 7th century mathematician Bhāskara I, was an Indian mathematician, astronomer and inventor. From verses in his main work, Siddhāṁta Śiromaṇī (सिद्धांतशिरोमणी), it can be inferred that he was born in 1114 in Vijjadavida (Vijjalavida) and living in the Satpuda mountain ranges of Western Ghats, believed to be the town of Patana in Chalisgaon, located in present-day Khandesh region of Maharashtra by scholars. In a temple in Maharashtra, an inscription supposedly created by his grandson Changadeva, lists Bhaskaracharya's ancestral lineage for several generations before him as well as two generations after him. Colebrooke who was the first European to translate (1817) Bhaskaracharya II's mathematical classics refers to the family as Maharashtrian Brahmins residing on the banks of the Godavari.