Shivaji and His Times c2.9

c2.9

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.