Shivaji and His Times c10.s4: §4. Puja and purification by Shiva

Shivaji and His Times c10.s4

Language: English

§4. Puja and purification by Shiva

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Then he set out on a round of worship at the most famous shrines of the land. Chiplun was visited early in May, 1674, and after adoring Parashuram in the great temple there, he returned to Raigarh on the 12th. Four days afterwards he again issued forth to worship the Bhavani goddess he had installed at Pratapgarh, as the ancient Bhavani of Tuljapur was beyond his reach. To this image he presented an umbrella of pure gold, weighing one and a quarter maunds, (worth about Rs. 56,000) and many other costly gifts.

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Returning to Raigarh in the afternoon of the 21st, he plunged into devotion there. Under the guidance of his family priest, Balam Bhatta, (the son of Prabhakar Bhatta Upadhyay), he adored Mahadev, Bhavani and other local deities for many days in succession.

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But one great defect had to be removed before his coronation could take place. He had to be publicly purified and "made a Kshatriya." On 28th May he performed penance for his ancestors' and his own sin of omission in not having observed the Kshatriya rites so long, and was invested by Gaga Bhatta with the sacred thread, the distinctive badge of the twice-born castes like the "pure" Kshatriyas of Northern India. The next step was to teach him the mantra (sacred verses) and initiate him into the rules of the Kshatriya caste. Shivaji very logically demanded that all the Vedic verses appropriate to the initiation and coronation of a true Hindu king should be chanted in his hearing, because the Kshatriyas being one of the holy "twice-born" castes, he as an admitted Kshatriya was entitled to use the Vedic mantras equally with the Brahmans. At this there was a mutiny among the assembled Brahmans, who asserted that there was no true Kshatriya in the modern age* and that the Brahmans were the only twice-born caste now surviving! Even Gaga Bhatta was cowed by the general opposition and evidently dropped the Vedic chant and initiated the Rajah only in a modified form of the life of the twice-born, instead of putting him on a par with the Brahmans in this respect. (T. S. 39a; Dutch Records.) This purification and its sequel, the investiture with the sacred thread, were performed with "great ceremony"; a vast amount of money was distributed among the Brahmans, Gaga Bhatta alone getting 7,000 hun and the crowd of ordinary Brahmans 17,000 hun.

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Next day, Shiva made atonement for the sins, deliberate or accidental, committed in his own life. He was separately weighed against each of the seven metals, —gold, silver, copper, zinc, tin, lead and iron,—as well as very fine linen, camphor, salt, nails (sic), nutmegs, and other spices, butter, sugar, fruits and all sorts of eatables (betel-leaves and country wine being among them.) All these metals and other articles to the weight of his body, together with a *lakh* of *hun* more, were given away to the assembled Brahmans after the coronation.

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∗ Exactly the same kind of trouble has been given by the Brahmans of the present generation to Shivaji's descendant, the Maharajah of Kolhapur. The following significant passage in T. S. (39a) suggests that Shivaji at one time thought of punishing the jealous intolerant Brahmans by removing them from lucrative secular duties like the command of armies and vice-royalties of provinces and confining them to their scriptural functions of fasting and praying. "The Maharajah learning [of the refusal of the Brahmans to teach him the Vedic mantras], said, 'The Brahmans are reverend men.. It is not proper to appoint them royal servants. They ought not to perform any work except worshipping God.' So he removed all the Brahmans from their posts and appointed Prabhu Kayasthas in their places. Moro Pant interceded for the Brahmans."

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But even this failed to satisfy their greed. Two of the learned Brahmans pointed out that Shiva, in the course of his raids, had burnt cities "involving the death of Brahmans, cows, women and children." He could be cleansed of this sin,—for a price. It was not necessary for him to pay compensation to the surviving relatives of the men and women who had perished in his sack of Surat or Karinja. It would be enough if he put money into the pockets of the Brahmans of Konkan and Desh. The price demanded for this 'pardon' was only Rs. 8,000, and Shiva could not have refused to pay this trifle. (Dutch Records, Vol. 34, No. 841.)