Shivaji and His Times c13.s12.13

c13.s12.13

Shivaji had been now absent from his own realm for ten months and the administration there was suffering from the lack of the master's control. At a grand council of his officers which he held in September it was decided to return to Maharashtra. [Martin.] This resolution was strengthened by the news that Aurangzib had ordered his governor of the Deccan to punish Qutb Shah for having joined and assisted the arch-rebel Shivaji, and a combined Bijapuri and Mughal army had invaded Golkonda territory near Malkhed.* (September 1677.) Therefore at the beginning of November 1677, Shivaji himself with 4,000 cavalry marched away from the Karnatak plains, leaving the bulk of his army in occupation of his new conquest and "promising to return quickly." (F. R. Surat, Vol. 107, Madras letter of 20 Nov. 1677.) Ascending the Eastern Ghats into the tableland, he took easy possession of his father's jagir districts,—Kolar, Uskota, Bangalore, Balapur and Sera, in the eastern and central parts of the present kingdom of Mysore, repressed the turbulent poligars of that No Man's Land, and then returned home through the Bellary and Dharwar districts, reaching Panhala early in April, 1678. (Sabh. 91.)