Later Mughals v2.c14.s18.1

v2.c14.s18.1

In 1604 Shahji had been married, by a lucky chance boldly seized on by his father, to the daughter of Lakhiji Jadon of Sindkher and deshmukh of sarkar Daulatabad, the most powerful Mahratta chief in the Ahmadnagar State. After playing an active part in all the fighting and intriguing from 1628 onwards, Shahji died [at Basavapattan on the Tungabhadra] in January 1664, leaving two legitimate sons, Shivaji and Venkaji, the first named being the son of his first wife, Jiji Bai. Shivaji was born in the fort of Siuneri on the 11th April, 1627. His early days were passed in the family house at Puna, but from his sixteenth year (c. 1643) he began to absent himself and talked of becoming an independent chief. To wean him from these excursions and the lawless associates who shared them, his guardian (his father being absent on service in the Bijapur State) entrusted some of the family estates to his management. But he still cherished his youthful project of independence, and in 1646 at the age of nineteen acquired peacefully the hill-fort of Torna, twenty-five miles south-west of Puna at the source of the Nira river. He now offered himself to the Bijapur State as its renter and feudatory. But for several years little notice was taken of him.