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A History of the Mahrattas v1.c5: Introduction

A History of the Mahrattas v1.c5

Language
English

Contents

Introduction

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CONTAINING

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I. MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. II. ‘A HISTORY OF THE MAHRATTAS.’ III. THE ORIGIN OF THE MARĀTHĀS. IV. MARĀTHĪ LITERATURE. V. SYNOPSIS OF EDITIONS OF GRANT DUFF’S WORK VI. LIST OF AUTHORITIES CONSULTED FOR THE PRESENT EDITION.

I. Memoir of James Cuninghame Grant Duff

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JAMES GRANT, known later as James Cuninghame Grant Duff, was the eldest son of John Grant, of Kincardine O’Neil, and his wife Margaret Miln Duff, heiress of the Duffs of Eden, Banffshire, and was born in the town of Banff on July 8, 1789. After his father’s death in 1799, his mother moved to Aberdeen, and there, at the Marischal College, Grant received his education. He was designed for the East India Company’s civil service; but impatient at the prospect of delay in obtaining an appointment, he accepted an infantry cadetship on the Bombay establishment in 1805, and arrived in India early in 1806. On his way to India he was wrecked off Cape St. Roque in Brazil, and had the misfortune to lose everything he possessed, including his family papers. He was present at the taking of the Cape of Good Hope by the expedition under Baird in 1806, where his patriotism was stirred by seeing three Highland regiments leap to their feet and advance to the strains of the ‘Rothiemurchus rant.’ On this occasion he had another hairbreadth escape from drowning, by the capsizing of a boat-load of soldiers, and only saved himself by the skill in swimming which he had acquired in his early days at Banff.¹

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¹ Extract from the *Book of the Duffs*, p. 498, by Taylor, 2 vols., 1914, kindly supplied by A. C. Grant Duff, Esq.

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After a period of study at the cadet establishment in Bombay, he obtained a commission as Ensign on April 23, 1807, and was posted to the 1st Battalion of the 1st Bombay Native Infantry (Bombay Grenadiers). In July, 1808, he took part with his regiment in the storming of Mālia, a fortified stronghold of freebooters in Kāthiāwār, where he displayed conspicuous gallantry. Two years later he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant, and became adjutant and interpreter of his regiment, in which, by reason of his knowledge and capacity, he exercised a greater influence than his seniority indicated. This preferment nearly involved him in a duel with a brother officer. While still a lieutenant he attracted the notice of Mountstuart Elphinstone, then Resident at the court of the Pēshwā in Poona, and became, together with Captain Pottinger, his assistant and devoted friend. Elphinstone had no mean opinion of his capabilities, and spoke of him in later years as ‘a man of much ability and, what is more, much good sense.’

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Grant was with Mountstuart Elphinstone at Poona in November 1817, when the final struggle with the Pēshwā took place, and is mentioned in Colonel Burr’s dispatch, describing the engagement between his brigade and the Pēshwā’s army at Kirkee, as having ‘most handsomely volunteered his services’ as an orderly-officer on the Colonel’s staff, and as having ‘particularly distinguished himself throughout the action.’ From a letter, dated Bombay, April 24, 1822, from Mountstuart Elphinstone to Grant,¹ it is clear that the latter deserves the credit for launching the timely attack of Colonel Burr’s brigade. In his history Grant (i.e. Grant Duff) speaks of a messenger being dispatched to warn Colonel Burr of the enemy’s approach and to order him to attack the Pēshwā’s army, when Burr himself was disposed to act on the defensive. ‘As to the facts about Kirkee,’ wrote Elphinstone in the letter above mentioned, ‘the important thing is that Colonel Burr and I had talked the matter over most fully, and fixed most positively that if ever war broke out he was to begin by attacking the Mahrattas; and from this I never knew, till we were actively engaged, that he ever swerved. When we were going to cross the river, you proposed to me to desire Burr to advance. I forget in what terms I sanctioned the request, but my impression was that it was perfectly settled Burr was to advance, and that the moment he knew war was begun he would do so. It turned out that I was quite mistaken, and that Burr would not have stirred without an order; and we are therefore indebted to you for what happened.' In the lengthy operations against the Pēshwā Bājī Rāo in 1817–18, which terminated in his submission and the annexation of the Deccan and Southern Marāthā country, Grant took an active part in both a civil and military capacity. He is mentioned in Mountstuart Elphinstone's diary under date December 7, 1817, as having fought gallantly with Russell, Pottinger, Tovey and others in a smart skirmish with the Pēshwā's troops near Pandharpur, and he was often consulted by Elphinstone on problems connected with the settlement of the country.

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¹ Colebrooke, *Life of M. Elphinstone*, ii. 138.

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In 1818 Grant, who now held the rank of captain, was appointed Resident at Sātāra, his instructions being contained in a letter from Mountstuart Elphinstone, dated April 8, 1818. His remuneration was fixed at 2,000 rupees per mensem, with allowances aggregating 1,500 rupees per mensem in addition to the cost of his office establishment.¹ By a proclamation of April 11, 1818, Elphinstone invested Captain Grant with full powers for the arrangement of the affairs of the Sātāra State; and by a treaty of September 25, 1819, entered into with the Rājā Pratāp Singh, Grant was to administer the country in the name of the Rājā until 1822, and then transfer the entire administration to him and his state officials, who might be presumed to be fit by that time for the task. Grant carefully impressed upon the Rājā that intercourse with other princes, except such as were specifically mentioned in the treaty, would be punished with annexation of his territory, and he trained the young chief so successfully in habits of business that Pratāp Singh was given complete control in 1822.² Mountstuart Elphinstone described the Rājā in 1826 as ‘the most civilized Marāthā I ever met with, has his country in excellent order and everything, to his roads and aqueducts, in a style that would do credit to a European. I was more struck with his private sitting-room than anything I saw at Sātāra. It contains a single table, covered with green velvet, at which the descendant of Shivaji sits in a chair and writes letters, as well as a journal of his transactions, with his own hand. I do not know what his ancestor would think of so peaceful a descendant.'¹ For this result credit is mainly due to Grant, who not only instructed Pratāp Singh in the art of administration, but cultivated in him a taste for literary and general knowledge, and taught the value of refinement of character.² During his period of office as Resident Grant concluded treaties with the Sātāra jāgīrdārs or feudatories, namely with the Pant Sachiv, the Pant Pratīnidhī, and the chiefs of Daphle and Phaltan on April 22, 1820, and with the Rājā of Akalkot and Sheikh Waekar (i.e. the descendant of Sheikh Mīran of Wai) on July 3, 1820. The character of his administration is best described in the words of a Brahman writer of to-day, who is known throughout the Bombay Presidency as an ardent student of Marāthā history. ‘In addition to judgment, energy and talent for business of no ordinary kind, he (Grant) possessed in an eminent degree the power of appreciating the character of the people and adopting measures to suit their peculiarities, which made him popular with the Rājā and his rayats alike. The name of “Grant Sāheb” is still familiar as a household word in the Sātāra district.’³ Before he finally relinquished office Captain Grant obtained for the Rājā the restoration of the fort of Pratāpgarh, then in British possession, which contained the famous temple of Bhavānī, the family goddess of Sivājī and his descendants, and which the Rājā was particularly anxious on this account to include in his own possessions.⁴

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¹ Parliamentary Papers, 1873, vol. xxxviii, pt. i.

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² Heber's Journal, ii. 212.

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¹ Colebrooke, Life, ii. 188.

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² For some details of Grant’s policy see his report on Sātāra in Elphinstone’s Report on the Territories taken from the Pēshwā, 1821.

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³ Rāo Bahādur D. B. Parasnis, Mahableshwar, pp. 40, 41.

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⁴ Parasnis, ibid., p. 41.

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By 1822 toil and anxiety had so told upon Captain Grant’s health that he was compelled to return to Scotland in the following year, after handing over charge of his appointment to Colonel (afterwards General) Briggs. While on furlough in Scotland he completed his History of the Mahrattas, the materials for which he had long been collecting, and eventually published it in 1826. On May 12, 1827, he finally retired from the Company’s service. On his mother’s death in 1824 he had succeeded to the Eden estates, and had assumed, in consequence, the additional name of Duff, and having settled on the estate, occupied himself with agriculture, cattle-breeding and planting. The hedges which he planted are still a feature of the neighbourhood. In the year 1827 he married Jane Catherine, only daughter of Sir Whitelaw Ainslie, an eminent physician, and author of the *Materia Medica of India*. In 1850 his wife succeeded to an estate in Fifeshire which belonged to her mother's family, and Grant Duff then adopted the further name of Cuninghame. He died on September 23, 1858, aged sixty-nine years.

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He left behind him a daughter and two sons, the elder of whom, Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff, G.C.S.I., was born in 1829. His christian names record the fact that Mountstuart Elphinstone was his godfather. He was Under-Secretary of State for India in Gladstone's first administration (1868–74), and a few months after the defeat of the Liberals in the latter year he visited India for the purpose of becoming better acquainted with the country, for whose government he had been responsible in the House of Commons during the preceding six years. He subsequently published a record of his tour, which is full of information regarding the flora of India. In 1880–1 he was Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, and from 1881 to 1886 was Governor of Madras. He died in 1906. During the later years of his life he published his voluminous *Notes from a Diary*, a work useful to the student of social conditions in the Victorian Age.¹

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¹ R. P. Karkaria, *The Charm of Bombay*, p. 386.

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The younger son is Mr. Ainslie Douglas Ainslie, of Delgaty Castle, Turriff, Aberdeenshire, who assumed the surname of Ainslie in lieu of Grant Duff. Captain Grant Duff's daughter, Alice Jane (*ob.* 1891), married Gaspar Obrist, of Zurich, and had two sons, one of whom is married and has two daughters.

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The Right Hon. Sir M. E. Grant Duff, G.C.S.I., had four sons and four daughters namely:

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(1) Arthur Cuninghame Grant Duff, formerly Minister at Dresden and Coburg.

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(2) Sir Evelyn Mountstuart Grant Duff, K.C.M.G., formerly Envoy at Berne.

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(3) Adrian Grant Duff, C.B., Lieutenant-Colonel, 1st Battalion Black Watch. Killed in action, September 14, 1914. He married the Hon. Ursula Lubbock, daughter of the first Lord Avebury, and had one son and three daughters.

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(4) Clara, who married in 1895 the Right Hon. F. Huth Jackson and has one son and three daughters.

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(5) Hampden Grant Duff, Captain, R.N. (retired).

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(6) Victoria Grant Duff, O.B.E.

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(7) Lily, who married the Hon. Gerard Collier, second son of the second Lord Monkswell, and has three children.

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(8) Iseult Grant Duff, formerly a missionary (C.M.S.) at Amritsar.

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Mr. Ainslie Douglas Ainslie, the author's second son, has had three sons and one daughter, namely:

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(1) Douglas, translator of works by Signor Benedetto Croce, the Italian philosopher.

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(2) Percival (ob. 1895), who married Beatrice Brabazon Moore, and left one daughter, now Mrs. Tristram Beresford.

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(3) Julian, who married (1) Florence Elphinstone, by whom he had two daughters, the elder of whom is married (Mrs. Ruthven Stewart), and (2) Juliet Molesworth, by whom he has one daughter.

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(4) Edith Fanny (Rachel).

II. ‘A History of the Mahrattas’

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Both as a monument of careful research and as an authoritative account of the political rise and decline of the Marāthā power in India, Grant Duff's *History of the Mahrattas* still commands unqualified praise. Details of the history of the ‘imperial banditti’ will be found in the works of Orme, Mill, Elphinstone, Wilks and others, or in the pages of Scott Waring, Blacker, Broughton, Thorn and Tone, to say nothing of the dispatches of Lord Wellesley.¹ But for a comprehensive survey of Marāthā political history and achievements, none of these writers were so favourably circumstanced as Captain Grant Duff, who served as a military and civil officer of the East India Company in the very heart of the Marāthā country, obtained access in his official capacity to important State documents and the correspondence of the Pēshwās, received charge of the Sātāra State records and other papers in the possession of the Rājā of Sātāra, the existence of which was unknown to the Pēshwā, and was also granted free access to the Company’s records at Bombay and Surat, as well as to those of the Portuguese Government at Goa. Moreover, Grant Duff was enabled to extract a mass of information from Marāthī manuscripts, from Persian and other documents which were either presented to, or purchased by, him, and from family and temple archives, of the existence of which his personal acquaintance with Marāthā chieftains and people enabled him to obtain direct information.¹

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¹ See article on ‘Marāthā Historical Literature,’ by D. B. Parasnis in *J.B.B.R.A.S.*, vol. xxii (1905–7), pp. 168 ff.

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¹ See Grant Duff’s preface to original edition, reprinted at pp. lxxxvi–xcii, *post*, and introduction to Calcutta edition, 1912 (Cambray & Co.).

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Two circumstances may be held to have contributed to the permanent value of Grant Duff’s literary achievement; the first being his own personal experience of the people about whom he wrote and his natural impartiality, and the second, the advice and criticism of his friend and official chief, Mountstuart Elphinstone. As regards the former, the following extract from the *Calcutta Review*, vol. iv, p. 178, is pertinent to the subject.

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‘Grant Duff lived among them (the Marāthās) for years, understood their peculiar character, and without any pretension to commanding talent, seems to have combined the chief qualifications necessary to a good Political Agent. He was industrious, impartial and benevolent. He was not, moreover, a mere bookworm. He studied men and manners in the camp, the cabinet, and in the peasant’s field, as well as in the dusty records of his office. He examined the past that he might understand the present. . . . He was eminently practical. His book is written with the candour and gentlemanliness of the accomplished soldier, combined with the kindliness to be expected from a disciple of Mountstuart Elphinstone. . . . The record of that portion of Mahratta history that came under Grant Duff’s personal observation appears to us to possess the rare merit of thorough impartiality. Each topic and individual is treated manfully and courteously. Truth was his grand object. He sank no point by which it might be ascertained or illustrated; but while doing so, he uniformly treated his opponents with unassuming candour.’

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As regards Mountstuart Elphinstone’s guidance, the following extracts from letters which he wrote to Grant Duff in 1822 testify to the constant interest which he took in the preparation of the work :

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‘I got through your first three chapters sooner than I had hoped ; I read them with great pleasure. You have acquired a much more calm, matured historical style than you had at first, and have absolutely none of the faults that I used to attribute to you. You will find my remarks chiefly censures, and chiefly in petty details ; but to be useful, they must be censures. . . . I think, however, you should have introduced more of the manners of the Mahrattas, more to put the people and their leaders before the eyes of the reader, and to enable him to understand their motives and modes of action. This can only be done by a picture of the Mahrattas as they now stand, and it may be a question whether that does not come more naturally when you reach the present period ; but, on the whole I think that, as you are writing for Europe, you should make people acquainted with your actors before you begin your play.’

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A month later he wrote :

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‘I send you my notes on Rājā Rām. The materials are admirably got together, and most of the transactions of the time set in full light, but there is a want of arrangement and of filling up, which may easily be supplied at your leisure. Your difficulty, and yet what none but you could accomplish, was to get at facts and to combine them with judgment so as to make a consistent and rational history out of a mass of gossiping Bukkurs and gasconading Tawareekhs (chronicles).’ ¹

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¹ Colebrooke, *Life*, ii. 136 ff.

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Elphinstone also helped Grant Duff with information about documents relating to Marāthā history. Colebrooke records the fact that one of Elphinstone’s letters contained ‘a long list of public documents to be found in the records of Poona, Hyderābād, Calcutta, etc., besides other materials, native and European’ ² ; while in a letter to Colonel Close, dated May 5, 1822, Elphinstone wrote :

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² Ibid., 138.

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‘Grant will have written to you about materials for his Mahratta history. By the by, I am not so sure of that, for I believe you hardly know him ; but it will be an excellent history. Sivajee, Sumbajee and Ram Raja now stand in full light, as simple and intelligible as Hyder and Tippoo. Grant does not ask for information about Sindia, Holkar, &c. &c., but he must want it ; and you might get Bukkurs, Persian Memoirs, &c., that would greatly assist him. Copies of Sindia’s principal treaties would be good things.’ ¹

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¹ Colebrooke, *Life*, ii. 140.

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In a later letter to his friend Strachey he speaks of

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‘Captain Grant the Resident, formerly adjutant of the Grenadier battalion, and now historian of the Mahratta Empire, for which he has collected inimitable materials.’

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With a man of Mountstuart Elphinstone’s genius as its literary sponsor and critic, it is not surprising that Grant Duff’s work ‘takes its place in the very first rank of historical compositions.’

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In a paper read before the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society on January 19, 1905,² Rao Bahādur D. B. Parasnis remarks that Pratāp Singh, the Rājā of Sātāra, had Grant Duff’s work translated into Marāthī, but that the translation had never been printed. He adds that he had obtained a copy of the translation, which he intended to present to the Society. The Rājā had been urged to make the translation by General Briggs, who wrote to him as follows on August 20, 1827 :

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² *J.B.B.R.A.S.*, vol. xxii, pp. 168 ff.

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‘I trust your Highness has received his (Grant Duff’s) History of the Marāthā Empire, which your Highness should procure to be translated by degrees into the Marāthī language, after which it might be struck off by lithography (chhāpp) at Bombay, which would obtain as great a name for your Highness in the East as your friend Captain Grant Duff has established for himself in Europe by compiling his excellent history.’

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As to the conditions under which Grant Duff wrote his history, and the details of its publication in 1826 by Messrs. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green of Paternoster Row, we have information in a letter written by Grant Duff from ‘Eden, by Banff,’ on January 30, 1846, to Mr. H. E. Goldsmid of the Bombay Civil Service.¹ The latter, when on furlough in 1845–6, wrote to Grant Duff urging him to publish a second edition of his work, and received the reply of January 30, 1846, from which the following extract is taken.

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¹ *J.B.B.R.A.S.* (1871–4), art. xi, p. 120, contains a note by James Taylor, Honorary Secretary of the Society, read August 8, 1872, describing how he obtained from Mr. Goldsmid in 1854 a copy of the letter which Grant Duff wrote to the latter in 1846. Mr. Goldsmid carried out with Captain Wingate the great revenue survey of the Deccan and Southern Marāthā Country. He died in Cairo at the beginning of 1855.

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After referring to the fact that his *History of the Mahrattas* was out of print, and that a proposal which he had made to the publishers for a second edition had met with little encouragement, Grant Duff proceeds as follows :

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‘It (i.e. *The History of the Mahrattas*) ought, and perhaps would have been undertaken by Mr. Elphinstone, had he not so soon then removed from the Deccan to Bombay. I began to collect materials at his (Mr. E.’s) and Sir Thomas Munro’s suggestion, lest we should lose the only chance of recovering the records of a very extraordinary power, the history of which was only known in a very superficial manner. As I went on collecting, I was obliged to unite the fragments in order to ascertain what was wanted, and I soon found myself obliged to employ agents, not merely within the confines of Mahārāshtra, but all over India.

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‘I wrote the greater part of the work when otherwise working twelve and fourteen hours daily without intermission (and of what sort you know), whilst some of the gentlemen with me, who had their full share of public business, particularly Mr. W. R. Morris, still in the Service, most zealously assisted in translating the mass of materials which were selected from a still larger mass, read over without discovering a single fact upon which we could depend. To account for some apparently very careless passages, I must tell you that I was subject to very serious headaches, which at last became very agonizing, returning every fifth day, and lasting from six to sixteen hours at a time, requiring me to work with wet cloths girt about my head, and I always could do best and most as the fit went off, so that I very often was induced to write on, upon these occasions, requiring no sleep until next night.

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‘ I was, as might have been expected, driven home; but it was some time before I had health or inclination to get through the task I had undertaken. At last I sent the MS. to the late Mr. Murray. It was read and approved of by the person to whom he submitted it. I waited upon the potentate of Albemarle Street, who told me he would publish the work if I would alter the title. I said “it was a history of the Mahrattas, and only of the Mahrattas.” “Who knows anything about the Mahrattas?” “That’s the reason,” said I, “the book has been written; no one does know much about them.” “Well,” replied Murray, “and who cares to know? If you call it the Downfall of the Moguls, and the Rise of the English, or something of that kind it may do, but *A History of the Mahrattas*—that will never sell!” I was not in the least discouraged, although I too well knew that what Mr. Murray said was true, and amongst other drawbacks, although India is now beginning to excite a little more interest in England, no one can write or speak of India as of Europe—the feeling which cheers and impels the writer or the orator by an indescribable . . . .¹ sympathy is wanting, and hence the tiresome task which the narration of events purely Indian imposes. Of course I do not mean such narratives as Orme’s *Carnatic*, which is more exciting than it could have been made by the fancy of De Foe. I got the MS. laid before Sir James Mackintosh, who most kindly, without stopping to finish it, walked from Cadogan Place to Paternoster Row (before the days of omnibuses), and at his recommendation Longman & Co. immediately wrote to me offering to publish it. It went through the press in six weeks, and many errors corrected by me escaped the vigilance of the compositor; the reason was the MS. was too distinctly copied; had it been in such an abominably indistinct hand as mine, one of their best men would have been selected, but because distinct I got one of the less experienced.

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¹ Word illegible in the original.

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‘ The late Mr. Rees was the partner with whom I chiefly communicated. No publisher in London at that time understood the business so thoroughly. When calculating the sale, I was surprised when he put down a very small proportion for India. The reason he said was “people in India don’t buy—

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they read, but borrow—and it would be long before the Mahratta History would be bought as an outfit book.” Murray was so far quite right—people require to know something before they desire to know more.

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‘The publishers took the risk. The book cost me upwards of £2,000 before it went to press. The Court of Directors took forty copies—which they would have done equally, had it been a Mahratta Vocabulary—and as a general rule, is liberal; but, although I collected all those materials, certainly valuable to Government, and gave them an original and most valuable map, they never even acknowledged the receipt of the latter. They never inquired, and I certainly never stated, that I lost upwards of £1,700 by what I had done, and indeed excepting a very few, I do not suppose any director or aspirant of that period even opened the Mahratta History after they became directors—a matter of no consequence, excepting as discouraging to such servants of the Company as may engage in extraordinary labour, and whom most certainly it is their province at least . . . .¹ in order to stimulate others in a like course.

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¹ Word illegible in the original.

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‘It is not unusual to send copies of new books to the principal reviews, and even to make interest, to ensure a favourable notice; but I begged Mr. Rees in this case to do nothing of the kind, as time, and time only, could prove whether the matter was correct—and that must be tried by Indian authority hereafter. I had in the first instance the favourable opinion of the best authorities of the period as regarded my facts, and the praise even of a favourable critique was therefore but a mere puff—of use principally to the booksellers. Mr. Rees, however, quite agreed with me.

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‘These details, if not useful, may be amusing to you.’

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Grant Duff, as will be seen from the concluding paragraph of this letter, left the final verdict on his work to posterity, which has fully endorsed the praise bestowed upon it by Mountstuart Elphinstone. Every leading authority on Indian history, both in the nineteenth and present centuries, has acknowledged the debt which he owes to Grant Duff’s careful presentment of Marāthā affairs. That minor mistakes should be discoverable here and there, that the dates of some transactions should now require revision, or that information as to persons, places and miscellaneous matters supplied by the author should have become capable of further illumination or more critical discussion, is only natural on a consideration of the considerable addition to our knowledge of the past history of the Deccan and Hindustan provided by the researches of historians, archæologists and students of popular manners and beliefs during the last sixty years. But such amendments, resulting from the discoveries of later inquirers, both in India and Europe, in no wise detract from the general value of Grant Duff’s work. Moreover, in several directions the researches of later authorities only serve to confirm the accuracy of Grant Duff’s opinions and conclusions. The case of the unjustifiable murder of Chandra Rāo More (pp. 116-18, vol. i, of text) exemplifies this proposition. An attempt has been made by two modern students of Marāthā history to show that Sivājī was not privy to the assassination of the unfortunate Rājā of Jāvli and his kinsmen, and that Grant Duff’s account of the matter is based on insufficient data. To substantiate their view they depend upon ‘more authentic and reliable documents that have lately been discovered,’ and in the last resort adopt the view that as Sivājī was not actually present at the moment of Chandra Rāo More’s death, he could not be declared guilty of murder under the modern penal law.¹ A complete answer to this unfortunate attempt to supersede the authoritative verdict of Grant Duff has been given by a critical authority on Mughal and Marāthā history, Professor Jadunāth Sarkar of the Indian Educational Service, on pages 54–55 of his recent (1919) publication, *Shivaji and His Times*. This careful historian, whose strictures on the credibility of the various Marāthī *bakhars* or chronicles should deter others from blindly accepting any Marāthī account of Sivājī’s career, excepting possibly that by Krishnājī Anant Sabhāsad, remarks on page 7 of his preface to the above-mentioned publication that,

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¹ Kincaid and Parasnis, *A History of the Marāthā People*, pp. 150–1; Kincaid’s letter, dated June 10, 1919, in *Times Literary Supplement*; Parasnis, *Itihasa Sangraha*, Sfuta Lekh i. 26–29 and ii. 11, and *Mahābleshwar*, pp. 17–21.

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‘So many false legends about Shivaji are current in our country, and the Shivaji myth is developing so fast (attended at times with the fabrication of documents), that I have considered it necessary in the interests of historical truth to give every fact, however small, about him that has been ascertained on unimpeachable evidence, and to discuss the probabilities of the others.’

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The net result of his careful examination of the evidence bearing upon Sivājī’s career is a delineation of the Marāthā chieftain’s character, qualities and achievements, which corresponds in many respects very closely with the estimate formed by Grant Duff nearly a century ago.

III. The Origin of the Marāthās

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The origin of the terms ‘Mahārāshtra’ and ‘Marāthā’ or ‘Mahratta’ is still the subject of speculation, nor is it yet clearly determined whether the name of the Marāthā people is derived from Mahārāshtra, the country in which they dwelt, or whether on the other hand the latter has derived its title from the leading tribes which inhabited it in early ages. The explanation given in Molesworth’s Marāthī dictionary that Mahārāshtra signifies ‘the great country’ is based upon Brahman etymology,¹ and is not now accepted as correct. Unacceptable also is the derivation, originally given by the Mahārs themselves, from ‘Mahār-rāshtra,’ ‘the country of the Mahārs’—the degraded tribe or class which serves the villages of the Deccan as watchmen, guides and scavengers.² The accepted derivation of Gujarāt from Gujar-rāshtra, ‘the country of the Gujars,’ and of Sorath from Saurāshtra, ‘the country of the Sauras,’ does not assist in solving the problem. As will be seen from the succeeding paragraphs, Mr. R. E. Enthoven is inclined to think that Mahārāshtra preceded the word Marāthā in point of time, and that the latter is a derivative signifying merely the people who lived in Mahārāshtra and spoke Mahārāshtri, or rather its popular vernacular form, Marāthī.

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¹ Wilson, *Indian Caste*, ii, 48.

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² Wilson, ibid.

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Other authorities, however, point out that Rock Edict V of the Mauryan emperor, Asoka, records the dispatch of Buddhist missionaries in the third century B.C. to the Rāshtrikas, who are probably correctly identified as the inhabitants of the Deccan.

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Again, in a rock-hewn cell at Bedsa, Poona District, is an inscription of the first century A.D. which has been deciphered as follows:

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‘The religious gift of Mahābhoja’s daughter Sāmadinikā, the Mahādēvī Mahārathini, and wife of Apadevanaka.’¹

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¹ I.G. Bom., i. 507.

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It is correctly argued by Professor D. R. Bhandarkar that ‘Mahā’ in the word Mahārathini is an honorific affix, as it undoubtedly is in the word Mahā-bhoja. Corroborative evidence is supplied by another early inscription in a cave at Nānāghāt, Poona District, which records that Sātakarni, ruler of the Deccan and third prince of the indigenous Āndhra or Sātavāhana dynasty, had a queen named Nāganikā, who was ‘the daughter of the Mahārathi Tranakayiro of the Angiya family.’² The Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsiang (A.D. 640) styled the kingdom of the early Chālukya dynasty of the Deccan Mo-ho-lo-cha, which is the Chinese transliteration of Ma-hā-rā-tha. In A.D. 753 a prince of the indigenous dynasty of Rāshtrakutas or Rattas overthrew the reigning Chālukya, a foreigner of Hūna-Gurjara descent, and thus obtained the mastery of the Deccan which his successors held for nearly two and a quarter centuries. Later still, from the middle of the eleventh until the end of the first quarter of the thirteenth century, a dynasty of Rathas or Rattas held sway in the Southern Marāthā country. Albiruni mentions (c. A.D. 1030) ‘Mahrat-dessa’ (i.e. Mahratta dēsh, Mahratta country); Friar Jordanus refers (c. A.D. 1328) to ‘the Kingdom of Maratha’; while Holwell (Hist. Events, &c., i. 105), writing in A.D. 1765, speaks of the ‘Maharattors,’ and states that the name is compounded of ‘Rattor’ and ‘Maahah.’³

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² Ind. Ant., xlvii, March, 1918.

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³ See Yule’s Hobson-Jobson, ed. Crooke, 1903, s.v. Mahratta.

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There is some ground for the view that the name of the people is derived from certain (Mahā) Rāshtrikas or Mahārathis who occupied a political position of importance in ancient times, and that the name of the country may have been an altered form of their tribal or official appellation.⁴ The point is, however, not free from doubt; and future research may possibly show that the Rāṣṭrikas of the Mauryan epoch and the ‘Mahārathis’ of the inscriptions were so called merely because they lived in a country known as Mahārāṣṭra and spoke Mahārāṣṭri.

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⁴ For information about the (Mahā) Rāshtrikas and Mahārathis, see D. R. Bhandarkar’s ‘Dekkan of the Sātavāhana Period’ in Ind. Ant., vol. xlviii, pp. 77 ff.

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The problem of the origin of the people who are known as Marāthās has been obscured by the varying use of that term. Grant Duff, for example, applies the term to individuals like Tānājī Mālusrē, and to groups like the Hetkaris who were certainly not Marāthās in the strict caste-sense of that word, as it is used to-day. His use of the term, however, as well as such expressions as Marāthā Brahmans, by which some writers have denoted the Konkanasth or Chitpāvan sect, can be justified if one accepts the view that the word Marāthā, as suggested above, meant originally nothing more than a person dwelling in Mahārāṣṭra or using Marāthī as his home tongue. The gradual development of a Marāthā caste out of the old tribal elements of Mahārāṣṭra during the last two centuries or more necessitates an attempt to determine, so far as may be possible, the origin of the people who now describe themselves as Marāthās and claim communal representation as a distinct caste or community under the new franchise arrangements contemplated by the Government of India Bill of 1919.

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Sir Herbert Risley ¹ suggested a few years ago that the Marāthās are the descendants of Saka or Scythian invaders of India, who after occupying the grazing country of the western Panjab, and finding their progress eastward blocked by the Indo-Aryans, turned southwards and mingled with the Dravidian or aboriginal population of the Deccan. The modern Marāthās were thus of Scytho-Dravidian origin. The theory was based partly upon anthropometric data of a decidedly unconvincing character, and partly upon the proficiency of the Marāthā as a light cavalryman—a trait which Risley too readily accepted as evidence of their supposed Scythian ancestry. Dr. W. Crooke ² has successfully exploded Risley’s suggestion, pointing out that skill in horsemanship is equally a characteristic of the Rājpūts and of the despised Jāts, and that the Marāthās’ success as cavalrymen ‘was mainly the result of local conditions in the Deccan, where the indigenous pony, an admirable beast, had been improved by the introduction of Arab blood from the Persian Gulf. This trade flourished in the days of Marco Polo, and probably dates from a very early period.’

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¹ Risley, *People of India*, p. 59.

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² *Rājpūts and Mahrattas*, J. R. Anth. I., vol. xl, 1910.

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Mr. R. E. Enthoven, another member of the Indian Civil Service, who has for some years been in charge of the Ethnographical Survey of the Bombay Presidency, has kindly supplied the following note, reproduced *verbatim*, indicating the inferences and conclusions to be drawn from the researches of the Survey up to the present date.

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‘In the course of the Ethnographical Survey of Bombay some new light is being thrown on the nature and origin of the various groups known commonly as Marāthās. Pending the completion of the work of the Survey, the following remarks should be taken as provisional, though they roughly embody the results of the Survey up to date.

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‘It has been usual to aim at classifying the almost numberless amorphous social groups, which have been formed in India by varying influences, as either caste, tribe or sect. In caste the formative influence is taken to be occupation; in tribe, common descent; in sect, religion.

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‘In the process of evolution a religious group or sect may develop into a congeries of occupational groups or castes, as we find in the case of the Lingāyats, a religious community found in the Bombay and Madras Presidencies, peculiar for the worship and wearing of the *linga*.¹ A tribe may similarly evolve caste-divisions. Marāthās are neither a caste nor a sect. They are more correctly a tribe in origin, which has developed caste divisions.²

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¹ Hastings, *Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics*, s.v. Lingayat.

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² Census of India, 1901, Bombay, vol. ix, ch. viii.

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‘In common parlance the term Marāthā is used with varying meanings. Residents in the Deccan, the ancient Mahārāshtra, speaking the language of the Bombay Deccan, Marāthī, would be referred to when in other parts of India as Marāthās or Arers. The term “Mahārathini” is applied to a princess mentioned in the cave-inscriptions of the first century A.D.; but we hear little of Marāthās, as such, until the rise of Sivājī in the seventeenth century brought them into political prominence. At that time Sivājī and his followers were referred to by contemporary writers as Marāthās or Sivājīs, this designation probably covering Dhangars, Rāmoshis, and Kolis (Māvalis), who joined in the Marāthā crusades across India. At the present day, Marāthā in its most limited sense means a member of the superior Marāthā land-owning or fighting class, of which His Highness the Mahārāja of Kolhāpur, a direct descendant of Sivāji, is a leading example. Used in this sense the term denotes a class that claims Kshattriya rank, does not allow widow-remarriage, and will not intermarry with the very numerous occupational divisions known as Kunbīs, Sutārs, Lohārs, Parīts, &c. It is worthy of note that a member of the ordinary cultivating caste in the Bombay Deccan will ordinarily describe himself as a Marāthā. Pressed as to what kind of Marāthā he is, he will explain that he is a Kunbī, i.e. cultivator, thereby indicating a distinction, based on occupation, with its inferior social status, between his class and the land-owning and fighting class already referred to, which for lack of a better term may be described as Marāthās proper. The claims of the latter to Kshattriya rank based on alleged Rājpūt descent are of very doubtful validity; and it is probable that they and the Kunbīs do not differ greatly in racial origin. When the Kunbīs are more closely examined, it appears that on the one hand a Kunbī may, if successful, rise to the superior Marāthā status, while on the other hand there is by no means an insuperable barrier between Kunbīs and the tribe of Kolis, an undoubtedly aboriginal tribe of the Western Ghāts. A Kolī taking to settled cultivation in the plains may become a Marāthā Kunbī. Proof of such a development in certain villages of the Poona district was furnished to me during the census of 1901. From this it is not unnatural to assume that there is to be found in Marāthās of all grades a greater admixture of aboriginal tribal elements than it has been usual in the past to admit.

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‘Certain aspects of the social organization of Marāthās of all occupational divisions, when examined in the light of the evidence available from the records of the Ethnographical Survey seem to lend support to this assumption. Thus, we find that in the extreme south of the Presidency, where Aryan influence on social customs is naturally less marked than in the north, a vigorous totemistic organization survives in the case of most tribes and castes. These are divided into sections known as balis that have a common object of worship in a tree, plant, animal, implement, &c. This object they will in no circumstances injure. Further, no intermarriage is allowed between members of a group with a common object of worship. Instances of such totems are: the elephant, elk, wolf, pig, tortoise, hog-deer, the coco-nut, pepper-vine, turmeric, the mango-tree, the tamarind, an axe, a white ant-heap, &c. Certain trees are of specially common occurrence in this connexion, notably the Kadamba (Nauclea cadamba), the Rui (Calotropis gigantea) and the Shami (Prosopis spicigera).

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‘As we pass northwards into the Deccan, the totemistic grouping is found to survive in a less vigorous form, as exemplified by the devaks of the Marāthā and Marāthā occupational groups. This devak, which seems in origin to correspond to the bali, is usually a plant or group of five plants, worshipped at the time of marriage or when entering a new house. Those who have the same devak do not usually intermarry. It is true that Marāthās of the upper class, i.e. Marāthās proper, claim to belong to one of eighty-four families or kuls, and that in their case the kul is more important as regulating intermarriage than the obsolescent or obsolete devak. Yet the survival of these devaks is of no little significance. It seems to lend support to the theory that there are among the Marāthās of all degrees traces of a kindred social organization to that of the Kolīs and other aboriginal units.

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‘The transitional stage at which groups possess both kuls similar to those which regulate marriage among Marāthās proper and totemistic sections such as we have discovered in the south of the Presidency, is to be observed in such castes as the Marāthā Parīts or washermen. These are divided into kuls bearing the well-known Marāthā kul names of Pawār, Gaikwād, Sūrvē, Dalvē, Kālē, Sālunkē, and Kadam. But to these kuls are attached devaks as follows:

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| Pawār | The sunflower |
| Sūrvē | The champa tree |
| Kālē | The tamarind |
| Kadam | The mango |

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and marriages are strictly forbidden between families with the same devak.

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‘It is interesting to note that in an early stage of the process of transition from *devak* to *kul*, the *devaks* are frequently found to be grouped into five-fold totems or *pānch-pālvi*. Since in these five-fold totems the trees, implements, &c., are clearly recognizable as those found in more primitive castes as regular totems, it would appear that the multiple *devak* is a stage in the decay of the more primitive system.’¹

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¹ *B.E.S.*, Monograph 32.

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‘It is possible that fuller developments of the results of the Ethnographical Survey may tend to show that Marāthās are merely a heterogeneous population largely aboriginal in origin, living in Mahārāshtra and using the Marāthī language.² There is probably little racial distinction between Marāthās proper, Marāthā Kunbīs, and the numerous other occupational groups in the Deccan, that describe themselves as Marāthās, such as Marāthā Sutārs, Marāthā Kumbhārs, Marāthā Lohārs, Marāthā Parīts, &c. &c.³ Among the Parīts the term Marāthā is held to be equivalent to Kunbī Parīt.⁴ These numerous occupational groups are very similar in physical type to the Kunbīs. Language, residence and social organization are common to all of them. Occupation and the resulting social status form the existing lines of cleavage.’

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² D. R. Bhandarkar, *Ind. Ant.*, xlviii. 80, connects Marāthās with Rāshtrikas through Mahā-Rāstrikas on the analogy of Mahā-Bhojas from Bhojas. But the term Mahārāshtra seems to be the earlier in origin.

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³ In Khāndesh the Marāthā Sutārs admit descent from Marāthā Kunbīs, *B.E.S.*, Monograph 175.

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⁴ *B.E.S.*, Monograph 32.

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The two main deductions to be drawn from Mr. Enthoven’s note are (*a*) that the modern Marāthās of the upper class are in origin identical with the great agricultural Kunbī tribe, and are now differentiated from them merely by the accident of social status, and (*b*) that in both the Marāthā and the Kunbī there is a distinct aboriginal strain, which facilitates the absorption into the Kunbī ranks of clearly aboriginal people like the Kolīs, and which justifies the conjecture that the Marāthās, whether of high or low status, are descended without any appreciable foreign admixture from the primeval tribes of the Deccan and Southern Marāthā country. The first deduction has also been arrived at by Dr. W. Crooke in his paper on ‘Rājpūts and Mahrattas,’⁵ in which he draws an analogy between the position of the Marāthās and Kunbīs and that of the Rājpūts, Jāts and Gujars in northern India. He points out that the claim of the upper-class Marāthās to a Rājpūt origin is unfounded; that in modern times some families may have absorbed Rājpūt blood; but that the claim is really the natural result of a rise in social status.¹ ‘The Rājpūts, Jāts and Gujars,’ remarks Dr. Crooke, ‘are ethnically akin; their position depends upon status, the Rājpūts having become the aristocratical body, while the Jāts and Gujars have remained agriculturists and cattle-raisers.’ In precisely the same way a rise in social status, resulting from the ‘kingdom-seizing’ raids of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries or from later economic causes, has resulted in a spurious distinction being drawn between the upper-class Marāthā and the lowly Kunbī cultivator, to whom he is shown by scientific investigation to be ethnically akin. This view finds curious corroboration among the Marāthās themselves. In a Memorandum of July 31, 1919, submitted by the All-India Mahratta League to the Parliamentary Joint Committee appointed to consider the Indian Constitutional Reforms Bill of 1919, it is definitely stated (pp. 8, 9) that ‘There is no difference whatsoever between a Mahratta and a Kunbī. . . . Since days long ago in the antiquarian history of this country they are related by blood to each other. . . . The terms “Mahratta” and “Kunbī” are synonymous; the educated and well-to-do portion of the community styles itself (as) Mahrattas, while the ignorant and the rural passes under the name Kunbī, though the former is akin to the latter as members of the same caste.’²

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⁵ *J. R. Anth. I.*, vol. xl, 1910.

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¹ The salient example is Sivājī himself, who for political reasons hid the truth of his Kunbī origin in a tale of descent from the great Rājpūt house of Udaipur. See Prof. J. Sarkar, *Shivaji and His Times*, pp. 267 ff.

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² Elphinstone (*History of India*) arrived at the same conclusion. ‘The chiefs (Mahratta) in those days were men of families who had for generations filled the old Hindu offices of heads of villages or functionaries of districts, and had often been employed as partisans under the governments of Ahmadnagar and Bijāpur. They were all Sūdras, of the same caste with their people, though some tried to raise their consequence by claiming an infusion of Rājpūt blood’ (*O.H.I.*, 431).

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The second deduction that the Marāthās represent, or are mainly descended from, the aborigines of Mahārāshtra, seems to draw some indirect support from certain features of their history and customs. In 1798 Colonel Tone, who commanded a regiment of the Pēshwā’s army (see note on p. 275, vol. ii, post), wrote that the three great tribes which compose the Marāthā caste are the Kunbī or farmer, the Dhangar or shepherd, and the Gaulī or cowherd, and that this accounted for the great simplicity of manners and rusticity which in his day distinguished both the rich and poor Marāthās.¹ ‘In the Central Provinces,’ writes Russell, ‘the names of the exogamous septs among the Kunbī sub-castes confirm the hypothesis that the Kunbīs are largely recruited from the pre-Aryan or aboriginal tribes.’²

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¹ Waring, *History of the Mahrattas* (1810), p. 104; Russell, *T. and C.C.P.*, s.v. Maratha, p. 200.

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² Russell, *T. and C.C.P.*, s.v. Kunbī, p. 21.

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Again, one of the salient traits of the upper-class Marāthās of historic times was their profound attachment to the small estates or villages in the Deccan, in which they had originally held the hereditary office of pātel or village headman; and this attachment persisted long after they had carved out for themselves principalities and states in other parts of India. The Bhoslē of Nāgpur adopted a personal title from the village of Deor in Sātāra District; the Rājā of Sātāra, after he had become a mere puppet of the Pēshwās, clung to the watan lands which he had inherited from Sivājī. Sindia preferred to be styled Pātel in the revenue accounts of the villages he acquired in Nimār; while Holkar and the Powārs of Dhār struggled desperately after the British conquest to recover the pātelki rights in Deccan villages which had belonged to their ancestors. Lastly we read that Rāghuji Bhoslē, the first Rājā of Nāgpur, used to celebrate his Dasahra on the ninth instead of the tenth day, as is usual among the martial classes, in order to emphasize the fact that he was originally an agriculturist of Mahārāshtra, and only incidentally a warrior.³ It seems impossible to regard this trait as arising merely from land-hunger or political considerations. Was it not rather the manifestation of a natural instinct, of an innate conviction that they were the real autochthones of Mahārāshtra, and that their connexion with the very soil of the Deccan dated back to misty ages long before the rise of Saka viceroys, Chālukya overlords and Muhammadan Sultāns?

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³ Elliott, *Hoshangabad Settlement Report*, quoted in Russell, ibid.

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Finally, let us glance at the two chief deities of the Marāthā people, Khaṇdoba and Bhavānī. Khaṇdoba, whose name is supposed to be derived from Khaṇde-aba, i.e. ‘sword-father,’ in allusion to the sword which he is usually depicted as carrying unsheathed in his right hand, is the tutelary deity of the Deccan, just as Bhāirav, whom he resembles in several particulars, is the tutelary guardian of the village.¹ His chief temples are at Jejuri in Poona District, and at Pāl in Sātāra District; the officiating priests are Guravs, a widely distributed class of temple ministrants. It is noteworthy that in most temples of Khaṇdoba the pujāris or officiating priests are not invariably Brahmans; in the Thāna District they belong to the lower castes; and of three temples in Bombay, only one has a Brahman officiant, the duties in the other two being performed respectively by a Kamāthi and a Murlī, i.e. a woman dedicated to the god.² This fact of itself would indicate that the cult of Khaṇdoba is ancient and primarily non-Brahmanic. Khaṇdoba’s peculiar connexion with the Marāthās is shown by the fact that a large portion of the temple buildings at Jejuri are gifts from the important Marāthā families of Powār, Holkar and Vinchurkar; that Shāhjī, the father of Sivājī, visited the temple in 1662 at an important moment of his life; and that it was to Jejuri that Tārā Bāi Mohite made the Pēshwā repair and swear a solemn promise in 1755. Khaṇdoba combines the position of a household god with that of guardian deity of Mahārāshtra, for he is the chief household god of all the various Hindu castes and tribes in the Poona District; and so widely-acknowledged is his position that pilgrimages are made to his temple not only by Marāthās from other districts like Khāndesh and Berār, but also by the Kolīs or aboriginal fishing-tribe of the Konkan, while new settlers in the Deccan, whether from northern India, Gujarāt or the Carnatic, are declared to join early in paying him reverence.³

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