The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c21.129

v4.c21.129

His chief defect was his intense conservatism. “Do not break the old, or introduce the new”, was his motto, and he confirmed incapable assignees and other useless officers in their holdings, much to the detriment of the state. To the day of his death, he was incapable of shaking off the belief that he was still the vassal of the Mughul empire, for which, and for the memory of the great emperor in whose household he was reared, he cherished the profoundest reverence. For this reason he never approved of the policy of the Peshwās in northern India, though he was unable to check their soaring ambitions. His last years were clouded by failing health² and the quarrels of his two Rānīs, Sakwar Bāī and Sagunā Bāī. The latter died in 1748, and Sakwar Bāī, the survivor, was a turbulent and ambitious woman. Lastly, he was deeply distressed at the lack of a legitimate heir. The Peshwā wished him to nominate Shambhūjī, and so unite the crowns of Sātārā and Kolhāpur, but Shāhū could never overcome his dislike of his cousin, who was, moreover, an elderly man without heirs, and disinherited him.³ He contemplated adopting a boy of the Bhonsle family, when Tārā Bāī dramatically announced the existence of a posthumous son of Shivājī II named Rām Rājā, who, she asserted, had been smuggled out of the fort of Panhālā at birth, and brought up in concealment by a *gondhālī*, or wandering bard, at Tuljāpur.