A History of the Mahrattas v1.c5.s2.34

v1.c5.s2.34

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,