New History of the Marathas v1.c16.87

v1.c16.87

“But Shivaji’s mere acquisitions constitute an altogether imperfect measure of the power he exercised and evoked. No man perhaps then living had a keener and juster appreciation of his own strength and the weak points of his opponents. He alone among his countrymen thoroughly gauged the sources and direction of both. He saw that the time had come when the Maratha nation might be made anew and he made it. He saw that with all its swelling pretentiousness, its enormous wealth, the vast numbers of its subjects, nothing but the shell of its old energy and power was left to the Muhammadan Dominion, that the vices and the jealousies of autocratic rule had eaten away the heart of it. Shivaji from the first day kept his eye steadily fixed on the vast project of Hindu reconquest, and both as a captain and as a statesman in each of which capacities he was pre-eminently great, his conduct shows an unswerving adherence to certain leading principles of action and administration, which he had prescribed to himself as the adequate and necessary means to an end.