Shivaji and His Times c10.s3: §3. Preparations for coronation
Shivaji and His Times c10.s3
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§3. Preparations for coronation
c10.s3.1
The preparations took many months. There was no unbroken tradition about the exact ceremonies and paraphernalia required at the coronation of an independent Hindu sovereign. The Sanskrit epics and political treatises were ransacked by a syndicate of pandits to find out the orthodox ancient precedents on these points, and agents were sent to learn the modern practice of the Rajahs of Udaipur and Jaipur.
c10.s3.2
Invitations had been sent to learned Brahmans of every part of India; the report of the coming ceremony had attracted others. Eleven thousand Brahmans, making 50,000 souls with their wives and children, were assembled at Raigarh and fed with sweets for four months at the Rajah's expense. The greatest forethought and organizing power must have been shown by Shiva in providing for the comfort of the numerous guests—Brahmans, nobles, local magnates of the realm, agents of other States, foreign merchants and visitors, and poor cousins, who flocked to the ceremony. Nothing went amiss in catering to this crowd of nearly a hundred thousand men, women and children.
c10.s3.3
The daily religious ceremonies and consultations with the Brahmans left Shiva no time to attend to other business, as the English envoy, Henry Oxinden, found to his chagrin. Shiva began by bowing to his guru Ramdas Swami and his mother Jija Bai and receiving their blessings. The unhappy discarded first wife of Shahji, now verging on eighty, had forgotten her husband's neglect in the love and devotion of her son, and rejoiced to see, before she closed her eyes, that he had reached the summit of human greatness as the crowned king of the land of his birth, an irresistible conqueror, and a strong defender of the religion which was the solace of her life. Like a queen-mother of the same country born 15 centuries earlier, Gautami, the mother of the Andhra king Shri Satakarni, she gloried in the glory of her victorious and orthodox son. A kind Providence seemed to have prolonged her life just long enough to enable her to witness the scene of his coronation, for she died twelve days after it.