Shivaji and His Times c20.s4.1

c20.s4.1

The Jedhe Shakavali or skeleton chronology in its surviving fragment runs from 1618 to 1697, without any formal preface or conclusion. Its correctness depends upon three conditions, viz., (a) the Jedhes' personal knowledge of what they wrote down, (b) their promptness in recording every event after its happening, instead of trusting to a dim and distant memory, and (c) the accuracy of the transcriber of the only manuscript of it (copied in the middle of the 18th century) that has come down to us. This family did not record the successive occurrences in a bound volume (or in a big family Bible as in old English houses), but on loose sheets of paper, which were afterwards compiled together, we know not with what accuracy nor with what gaps between. For the period before 1660,—in which year Shivaji first clearly demonstrated his power of standing on his own legs and former vassals of Bijapur like the Jedhe chieftains found that it was safer to join him than to keep aloof or play a double game (which is Bhave's charge against Kanhoji Jedhe),—the dates in the Jodhe Chronology are often demonstrably wrong (e.g., the death of Ibrahim Adil Shah, the fall of Daulatabad, etc.) Even for later times, some months and years have been wrongly given or at least copied (e.g., the fall of Vellore.) Several of the entries, particularly those relating to the Muslim States, were merely borrowed by Jedhe's clerks from other sources, because we know that short Persian manuals of historical dates were in circulation in polished society in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Hence, it is not always safe to rely on Jedhe's testimony for any doubtful date when not supported by some other authority.