[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [General history and culture](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general) › [A History of the Mahrattas](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.grantduff-1826) › v2.c44.2 # A History of the Mahrattas v2.c44.2 A History of the Mahrattas v2.c44.2 - **Language:** English ### [v2.c44.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.grantduff-1826.v2.c44.2) The designs of Sindia, as we have already observed, were early directed to independence, but he was at the same time desirous of preserving a coalition, such as would unite the chieftains of the empire against all foreign enemies. He was inimical to the overgrown ascendancy of the Bramins. In his progress he first assisted the one Bramin against the other, and then attempted to overawe and control him whom he had raised. His absence from Poona, his campaign against Goddard in Guzerat, the necessity of his returning to his own Jagheer in Malwa, his defeat by Camac, and the successful result of the campaign directed by the Bramins against Goddard, gave an apparant superiority to his rivals, which seemed to foretell the fall of his fortunes. But the treaty of Salbye, the recognition of his independence by the British Government, and the commanding station in which he was placed as the mediator and guarantee of a peace honourable to the Mahrattas, raised him at once from decline to aggrandizement. In his first attempts to extend his power in Hindoostan, his contemporaries supposed him unequal to such a task, and that he must be ruined by the consequences of his own ambition. When he surmounted his difficulties, and not only rendered himself independent, but held in his hands a force which might control the Mahratta empire, he was very much alarmed lest Nana Furnuwees should call in the aid of a subsidiary, both as it interfered with his own views and sacrificed so much to the English. The power of that nation, at a time when they were supposed to be weak and their resources exhausted, had appeared in the late war greater than at any former period, and had attained a height which, in Sindia’s opinion, threatened the subjugation of all India. He was declaredly averse to the entire conquest of Tippoo’s territory, as he conceived that measure dangerous to the Mahratta state; but whilst the war continued, he does not seem to have seriously meditated hostilities against the English; neither did he take any secondary steps to undermine the influence the latter had acquired with the Bramin ministers at the Poona court, because the revolution he contemplated would confine or enlarge the intercourse as he might desire. - [Previous: v2.c44.1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.grantduff-1826.v2.c44.1) - [Next: v2.c44.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.grantduff-1826.v2.c44.3) - [Up: v2.c44](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.grantduff-1826.v2.c44) --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.grantduff-1826.v2.c44.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.grantduff-1826.v2.c44.2) · Pramāṇa