Shivaji and His Times c20.s3: The Dattaji-Malkare type of bakhars
Shivaji and His Times c20.s3
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The Dattaji-Malkare type of bakhars
c20.s3.1
Next after Sabhasad's work (1694) both in point of time and reliability, is a group of shorter histories, all derived from the same original and all forming one type. In Marathi they are known as the *91 qalmi* (or *96 qalmi*) Bakhar (printed in the *Prabhat* by Rajwade and in the *Bharatvarsha* by Parasnis), and to readers of Grant Duff as the *Raigarh life*, Frissell's English version of which has been printed by Forrest. The *Tarikh-i-Shivaji* represents an amplified Persian translation of the same work, evidently made from an earlier and longer Marathi original than the *91 qalmi* Bakhar. Warren Hastings presented a MS. of it to the India Office, London, and some other copies exist in the British Museum and elsewhere.
c20.s3.2
The I. O. L. MS. ends with the death of Shivaji, but contains at the end a supplement in the form of a bare list of Shivaji's descendants at Satara down to Ramraja, the adopted son and (then reigning) successor of Shahu. This translation fixes the lower limit of the date of the Marathi original as 1770. The earliest limit might well go up to 1720, the time of the restoration of Shivaji's kingdom in a settled form under Shahu on the final abandonment of the Mughal claims to it.
c20.s3.3
The nucleus of this group or type of works was some very short sketch of Shivaji's history in the possession of Dattaji (Shivaji's *Waqnis* or chronicler), from which Anaji Ranganath Malkare's son Khandoji took a copy. [The colophon calls the original a detailed history, *tafsil-war*, which I consider very unlikely.] Khandoji, though he nowhere says so, padded out the original by interpolating in it every movement and posting of his father in Shivaji's reign, as Dattaji could not have cared for such small fry as Anaji Ranganath Malkare and considered him worthy of mention almost as often as the Prime Minister himself. I have designated it as the Malkare Bakhar and not Dattaji's work, because the latter has not come down to us.
c20.s3.4
This recension has been printed, but the Marathi text, in both the editions, is full of copyists' errors or wrong readings, and the English translation (in Forrest) is horribly incorrect in the proper names and dates. (But their correction would be very easy for one who knows all the sources for Shivaji). The Persian version clearly goes back to Malkare's source but also derived a portion of its information from some other work than Dattaji's. After the necessary corrections of names and dates have been made and the loose traditions weeded out, the substratum that remains is of high historical value and is in several points corroborated by unimpeachable records of Shivaji's time. When judiciously used it is a very helpful supplement to Sabhasad.