Shivaji and His Times c10.s3.3

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.