Shivaji and His Times c20.s7: Value of European Factory Records
Shivaji and His Times c20.s7
- Language
- English
Value of European Factory Records
c20.s7.1
The records of the English factories on the Bombay coast and inland are of the highest value for dates and facts. Sometimes the factors frankly confess that the reports they have heard and are writing down immediately after are so contradictory that they know not what to believe. But, on the other hand, the English at Rajapur and Karwar employed paid spies who travelled in Shivaji's dominions and brought back news of his doings and plans; the information from the different factories helped to check and correct one another; and a false rumour is usually followed by its contradiction. Above all, these factory records have the supreme merit of having been preserved in the original manuscript without any later garbling or interpolation.
c20.s7.2
The value of the Memoire of Francois Martin (of Pondicherry) is the highest imaginable for Shivaji's Karnatak expedition. His agents were frequently in attendance in the camp of Shivaji and the reports they brought back were immediately entered in his diary. The English of Madras also sent a clever Brahman to Shivaji on two or three occasions. The reports of such witnesses entirely displace the later gossip about the Karnatak expedition given in the Marathi books. The Jesuit letter for 1677 is mostly wrong and based on distant rumour; it cannot stand against Martin's testimony for this episode in Shivaji's life.