Shivaji and His Times c5.s1.1

c5.s1.1

The Bhonslé clan of the Maratha caste was made up of many families, scattered over various places in Western India. Unlike a Rajput or Scottish clan, they had no union under a common and generally-recognized chieftain nor even mutual intercourse, but merely bore the same surname and married into other Maratha families. Agriculture was their original occupation, as with most Marathas. But the break up of the large monarchies of Western India, (namely, the Bahmani at the end of the 15th century and the Nizam Shahi at the beginning of the 17th) opened to the ablest men among them the chance of rising to military power and lordship over land. The history of Shivaji's family illustrates this transformation of the tiller of the soil by successive stages into the bandit, the captain of mercenaries, the feudal baron, and the sovereign ruler, which was so frequent during the troubled times that followed the downfall of central powers like the Bahmani or the Delhi empire and ended only with the establishment of British paramountcy and British peace.