Shivaji and His Times c8.s9: §11. Attempt to murder Shivaji

Shivaji and His Times c8.s9

Language: English

§11. Attempt to murder Shivaji

c8.s9.1

The cowardly governor Inayet Khan, who had run into the fort in Tuesday night, formed an infamous plot from his safe refuge. On Thursday he sent a young follower of his to Shivaji with pretended terms of peace. These were so manifestly unreasonable that Shiva scornfully asked the envoy, "Your master is now cooped up in his chamber like a woman. Does he think of me too as a woman that he expects me to accept such terms as these?" The young man immediately replied, "We are not women; I have something more to say to you;" and whipping out a concealed dagger he ran full at Shivaji's breast. A Maratha body-guard that stood before the Rajah with a drawn sword, struck off the assassin's hand with one blow. But so great was the force of the desperado's rush that he did not stop but drove the bloody stump of his arm on Shiva's person and the two rolled on the ground together. The blood being seen on Shiva's dress, his followers imagined that he had been murdered, and the cry ran through the camp to kill the prisoners. But the same guardsman clove the assassin's skull; Shiva rose up from the ground and forbade any massacre. Then he ordered the prisoners to be brought before him and cut off the heads of four and the hands of 24 others from among them at his caprice, but spared the rest.*

c8.s9.2

∗ An old merchant who had brought 40 ox-loads of cloth from near Agra but sold none, tried to propitiate Shivaji by offering it to him. But on his answering that he had no ready money, his right hand was cut off by Shivaji's order, he was driven away, and his cloth burnt by the Marathas. (Letter of Escaliot.) Bernier, 190, for the narrow escape of a Jewish ruby-merchant from the death threatened by Shivaji to extort his wealth. "Mr. Smith was present when he cut off more than 26 hands in one day, and as many heads; whoever he was that was taken and brought before him that could not redeem himself, lost either his hand or his head; and his manner was first to plunder and then to cause the owner of the house to give him something over and above to redeem his house from being burnt, and yet that perfidious villain would fire it afterwards, though he had obliged himself to the contrary." (Surat to Co., 28 Jan.).

c8.s9.3

At ten o'clock in the morning of Sunday the 10th, Shivaji suddenly departed from Surat with his army, on hearing that a Mughal force was coming to the relief of the town. That night he encamped twelve miles off and then retreated by rapid marches to Konkan.

c8.s9.4

∗ Mr. Anthony Smith, a servant of the English E. I. Company, was seized on landing at the Dutch jetty and kept a prisoner in the Maratha camp for three days. Along with other prisoners, his right hand was ordered to be cut off, at which he cried out to Shivaji in Hindusthani to cut off his head instead. But on his hat being taken off, he was recognized as an Englishman and spared. On Friday afternoon he was sent to the English factory with a message from Shiva, but President Oxenden detained him there. The Log of the *Loyal Merchant* says that he was ransomed for Rs. 350; (also the Eng. President's letter.)

c8.s9.5

For some days afterwards the fear of his return prevented the townspeople from coming back to their desolated homes. But the imperial army reached Surat on the 17th and then the cowardly governor ventured to return from the fort. The people hooted at him and flung dirt on him, for which his son in anger shot a poor innocent Hindu trader dead. Sir George Oxenden, the English President, won the people's praise and admiration for having made a gallant stand and saved not only the Company's property, but also the quarter of the town situated round the English factory.*

c8.s9.6

The Emperor showed his sympathy with the afflicted citizens by excusing the custom duties for one year in the case of all the merchants of Surat, and he rewarded the valour of the English and the Dutch traders by granting them a reduction of one-half per cent. from the normal import duties on their merchandise in future.

c8.s9.7

§12. Shivaji's doings in 1664.

c8.s9.8

The year 1664 that lay between the departure of Shaista Khan and the arrival of Jai Singh, was not marked by any Mughal success. The new viceroy, Prince Muazzam, lived at Aurangabad, caring only for pleasure and hunting. His favourite general, Maharajah Jaswant Singh, was posted at Puna. From this place he marched out and besieged Kondana (Nov. 1663.) The Rajputs are proverbially inefficient in sieges, and Jaswant, after wasting six months before the fort, delivered a rash and fruitless assault, in which he lost many hundreds of his soldiers, chiefly owing to a gunpowder explosion. Then he quarrelled with his brother-in-law Bhao Singh Hada, evidently on the question of responsibility for the failure, and the two officers abandoned the siege (28 May 1664) and with their armies retired to Aurangabad to pass the rainy season. The campaign ended in absolutely no gain. (*Dil.* 47; *A. N.* 867; *Jedhe.*)

c8.s9.9

∗ As he wrote to the Company, 28th January, 1664, (F.R. Surat 86) : "The townspeople cry out in thousands for a reward from the King to the English that had by their courage preserved them. We were with the noblemen of the army that came to our relief, from whom we received great thanks for the good service we did the King and the country, whereupon your President, having a pistol in his hand, laid it before the chief, saying... he now laid down his arms, leaving the future care and protection of the city to them; which was exceedingly well taken, [the general] telling the President [that] he accepted it, and he must give him a vest, a horse and gird a sword about him. But your President told him they were things becoming a soldier, but we were merchants and expected favour from the King in our trade." The reduction of import duty in favour of the English and the Dutch was withdrawn in Nov. 1679. [Aurangzib, v. ch. 60 §5.]

c8.s9.10

The field being clear, Shivaji ranged at liberty in spite of the height of the rainy season, and plundered Ahmadnagar. (Karwar to Surat, 8th August, 1664. *F. R. Surat*, vol. 104.)

c8.s9.11

On 26th June the English factors write, "Shivaji is so famously infamous for his notorious thefts that Report hath made him an airy body, and added wings, or else it were impossible he could be at so many places as he is said to be at, all at one time...They ascribe to him to perform more than a Herculean labour that he is become the talk of all conditions of people...That he will lay siege to Goa we do hardly believe, in regard it is none of his business to lay siege to any place that is fortified against him, for it will not turn him to account. He is, and ever was, for a running banquet, and to plunder and burn those towns that have neither defence nor guard." (Surat to Karwar. *F.R. Surat* 86.)

c8.s9.12

And, again, on 26th November, "Deccan [*i.e.*, Bijapur] and all the South coast [*i.e.*, Kanara] are all embroiled in civil wars,...and Shivaji reigns victoriously and uncontrolled, that he is a terror to all the kings and princes round about, daily increasing in strength...He is very nimble and active, imposing strange labour upon himself that he may endure hardship, and also exercises his chiefest men that he flies to and fro with incredible dexterity." (Surat to Co., F.R. Surat 86.) At the end of the monsoons, i.e., in October, he burst into Kanara. (See Ch. 10.)