Shivaji and His Times c2: Preface to the Third Edition
Shivaji and His Times c2
- Language
- English
Preface to the Third Edition
c2.1
IN this edition more than half the narrative has been entirely re-written and expanded; and elsewhere, too, so many old statements and views have been modified as the result of a fresh study of the subject that in its present form the book has practically become a new one. A larger format and type have been used. Briefly speaking, the main points in which it differs from the two earlier editions are the following:—
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(a) The total rejection of 19th century fabrications, like the *Chitnis bakhar*, *Shiva-digvijaya*, the *Vriha-dishwar* inscription, etc.
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(b) A cautious and selective use of the middle 18th century sources, such as the *91-qalmi bakhar* in its different recensions.
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(c) The full use of contemporary French and Portuguese sources for the first time, and of the *Marathi* chronologies (*Shakavalis*).
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(d) The addition of all the four portraits of Shivaji definitely known to be contemporary, and of a full chronology in which the dates make a closer approximation to exact precision. An index has been now supplied for the first time.
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Besides adding the above features, I have made a fresh and detailed study of the old materials in the light of the newly acquired sources. In the course of the eight years that have passed since the second edition was published, much new material has been collected, and a study of them as well as further reflection has naturally resulted in several minute corrections and changes in the details of the narrative and my opinion about certain persons and events.
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So far as the extant materials go, the present edition is definitive; but several dark corners still remain for future discovery of authentic records to illuminate. This is especially the case with the boyhood and youth of Shivaji.
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When Captain J. Grant Duff was writing his *History of the Mahrattas* (published in 3 vols. in 1826), the veteran scholar-statesman Mountstuart Elphinstone, in a letter to him (20th April, 1822) exactly described the character of the materials then available for a life of Shivaji: "Your difficulty was to get at facts and combine them with judgment, so as to make a consistent and rational history out of a mass of gossiping *bakhars* and gasconading *tawarikhs*." These two sources of admittedly dubious value were supplemented by the English factory records, which Grant Duff rightly declared to be "very important for fixing dates, and invaluable in corroborating facts admitted by native authorities."
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Three classes of sources unknown to Grant Duff have now filled up many gaps in our knowledge and proved his narrative of Shivaji's career obsolete and erroneous in many places. (*a*) The contemporary French and Portuguese MS. sources are now available for the first time, thanks to the opening of the Paris archives (*sc.* the *Memoires* of Francois Martin) and the scholarly and devoted work of Senhor P. Pissurlencar among the Goa records. The original history of Manucci has been made accessible in W. Irvine's masterly translation. The travellers' tales in the printed French and Dutch works to which Orme referred with justifiable disappointment, can be totally rejected now. (*b*) The skeleton chronicles (*Shakavalis*) in Marathi supply many reliable dates and facts, after they have been tested with care and a knowledge of other sources. The *91-qalmi bakhar* is a much earlier and less legendary work than the *Chitnis bakhar* (1810) on which Grant Duff so frequently depended, with the result of falsifying his narrative of Shivaji in many places. (*c*) The same misfortune attended Grant Duff in connection with his Persian authorities. He used the very late (1735) and traditional history of Khafi Khan, which must be now rejected equally with the *Chitnis bakhar*. And he had no knowledge of the detailed and absolutely contemporary official histories of Aurangzib (*viz.* *Alamgir-namah* and *Masir-i-Alamgiri*), the Court newsletters (*akhbarat*), the personal memoirs of Bhimsen, and the letters of Jai Singh, —all of which are in Persian and have been fully utilized by me in this work.
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A synthesis of this vast and varied mass of new materials, made available during the century following the publication of Grant Duff's book, has naturally resulted in the supersession of Grant Duff's chapters on Shivaji on the one hand and of the Marathi bakhars (with the exception of the contemporary recollections of Sabhasad) on the other, both of which had so long held the field. The same has been found to be the case in respect of the history of Shambhuji and Rajaram, which I have reconstructed in my *Aurangzib*, volumes 4 and 5.
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The critical bibliography at the end of this book discusses the character of the materials that have been rejected as well as that of the authorities followed by me.
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From the purely literary point of view, the book would have gained much by being made shorter. But so many false legends about Shivaji are current in our country and the Shivaji myth is developing so fast (attended at times with the fabrication of documents), that I have considered it necessary in the interests of historical truth to give every fact, however small, about him that has been ascertained on unimpeachable evidence and to discuss the probabilities of the others.
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The Marathas were only one among the many threads in the tangled web of Deccan history in the Seventeenth century. Therefore, to understand the true causes and full consequences of Shivaji's own acts and policy, it is necessary to have a detailed knowledge of the internal affairs of the Mughal empire, Bijapur and Golkonda also. The present work is more than a mere biography of Shiva; it frequently deals with the contemporary history of these three Muslim States, though an exhaustive treatment of the subject finds its proper place in my *History of Aurangzib*, Vol. IV.
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December, 1928.
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JADUNATH SARKAR
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First edition, April 1919. Second edition, June 1920.
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the *Gesta Romanorum*, the *Legenda Aurea* of Jacobus de Voragine, and the *Speculum Historiale* of Vincent of Beauvais. These were the books that fed the imagination of the Middle Ages, and they were the books that the Church, in its wisdom, provided for the instruction and edification of the faithful.
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But the Church did not merely provide books; it also provided the means of their dissemination. The monastic scriptoria, where monks labored in silence to copy the sacred texts, were the precursors of the printing press. And when the press finally arrived, it was the Church that first harnessed its power, using it to spread the word of God to the corners of the earth. The Gutenberg Bible, the first major book printed in Europe, was a testament to the Church's commitment to the written word.
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Yet, even as the Church championed the spread of knowledge, it also sought to control it. The *Index Librorum Prohibitorum*, or List of Prohibited Books, was a tool used by the Church to suppress ideas it deemed dangerous or heretical. This tension between the desire to educate and the need to control would define the Church's relationship with literature for centuries to come.
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It is a complex history, one that is marked by both enlightenment and suppression. But it is a history that cannot be ignored, for it is the history of the very foundation of Western civilization. The Church, in its role as the guardian of knowledge, has shaped the way we think, the way we write, and the way we understand the world around us.
Linked texts (1)
- Ciṭṇīs bakhar — Malhār Rāmrāv Ciṭṇīs 1810, Marathi