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Shivaji and His Times c14.s9: §13. Death of Shivaji

Shivaji and His Times c14.s9

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English

§13. Death of Shivaji

c14.s9.1

On 23rd March, 1680, the Rajah was seized with fever and blood dysentery. The illness continued for twelve days. Gradually all hopes of recovery faded away, and then, after giving solemn charges and wise counsels to his nobles and officers, and consoling the weeping assemblage with assurances of the spirit's immortality in spite of the perishableness of the body, the maker of the Maratha nation performed the last rites of his religion and then fell into a trance, which imperceptibly passed into death. It was the noon of Sunday, 4th April, 1680, the full moon of the month of Chaitra.[*]

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He had not yet completed the 53rd year of his age. The Muslim world ascribed his premature death to the curse of the saint Sayyid Jan Muhammad of Jalna. In Maharashtra there were some whispers of his wife Soyra Bai, the mother of Rajaram, having administered poison to him to prevent his giving the throne to Shambhuji.

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∗ Last illness and death of Shivaji: Sabh. 101-104; F. R. Surat 108, Bombay to Surat, 28 April, 1680 (followed by me); M. A. 194; Dil. 165 (one sentence only); K. K. ii. 271 (one sentence); Storia, ii, 231. T. S. 40b (one sentence), and Dig. 462-467 are "loose, traditional works" and charge Soyra Bai with murder. Orme's story (Frag. 89) has been rejected by me, (Ind. Hist. Quarterly, iv. 605). In 1680 the Chaitra full moon extended over both 3rd and 4th April (Sat. and Sunday). I follow Sabhasad who gives Sunday, which agrees with the English F. R.

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The oldest Marathi *bakhar*, that of Sabhasad, is silent on the point, and with good reason. A servant of Rajaram, in a book written by order of that king and for his eyes, could not possibly have mentioned his mother’s murder of her husband even if it had been true. Shambhuji on his accession put Soyra Bai to death on the charge of her having poisoned her husband, but it was in all probability a false pretext for wreaking vengeance on his step-mother for her late attempt to crown her own son. Readers of Macaulay’s account of the death of Charles II. will remember how at that very time in Europe hardly a sovereign died without the event being ascribed to poison.

c14.s9.5

It is true that throughout life Shivaji (like all other Eastern sovereigns) was on his guard against being poisoned. We find him, during the Karnatak expedition, repeatedly writing to the English to send him Maldive cocoanuts, bezoar stone and other “good counter-poisons” (*i.e.*, antidotes), offering even to pay for them. But it merely indicated common precaution. (For the use of the bezoar stone as an antidote to poisons, see Irvine’s *Storia do Mogor*.)

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