History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v2.c24.s1.436

v2.c24.s1.436

⁹²³ In 'Gleanings from Maratha Chronicles' appended to the late Mr. Justice Ranade's 'Rise of the Maratha Power', Mr. Justice Telang observes (p. 286) 'they had also to strain a point, when as a preliminary to the installation, the thread ceremony essential for a kṣatriya was performed on Shivaji at a time when he was forty-six or fifty years old and had already had two sons, an irregularity which also was, we are told, expressly assented to by all the brāhmaṇas and pandits. How the brāhmaṇas and pandits worked their way to this decision, none of our authorities state'; and further on (p. 288) he casts undeserved aspersions 'taking the whole evidence together it looks like a case of a more or less deliberate manipulation of facts and religious rites in aid of a foregone conclusion adopted for a purely political purpose'. Mr. Justice Telang writes rather like a judge than like a scholar or a historian. The judge has to give a decision on the evidence adduced by the parties before him; it is no part of his business to collect evidence for himself. But the role of a historian is entirely different. He must not only try to read all evidence available till the time he writes but he must himself ferret out all possible evidence and make searches in places where evidence is likely to be found. Above all he must be cautious in his condemnations of persons long dead on the strength of the meagre evidence read by him. Mr. Telang wrote the paper above referred to in 1892, but long before that Pāraskara (in 1886) and Āpastamba (in 1885) had been translated and published in 'the Sacred Books of the East series.' But he, though a great judge and also a great Sanskrit scholar, nowhere shows that he cared to see whether *śāstric* rules allowed the upanayana of a man himself at any age whatever (after some penance). If he had seen those rules he would not have unjustly taken to task pandits that flourished two hundred years before him and attributed irregular motives to them. It does not appear that he made any search in the archives of the Udaipur Durbar to see how Shivaji traced his descent from the Sisodia clan, nor does it appear that he even went to Mudhol and other places in Mahārāṣṭra where ancient Maratha families have been holding sway for centuries. The papers recently published from the records of the Mudhol State amply establish Shivaji's claim to a Rajput lineage.