The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s8.t5.1

c14.s8.t5.1

Śivāji was fully conscious of his mission as a restorer of Hindu political dignity to its ancient or rather pre-Moslem conditions. Accordingly he wanted to go back to the fountain of Hindu culture in the smallest details of his life. The very words and phrases of daily existence especially in public, civic, administrative or political life, had become Persianized in his time on account of longstanding Moslem influence. His first and foremost ambition in this regard consisted in Sanskritizing these terms. He desired the old Hindu atmosphere to be reborn even in the common-place conversations of the day. A veritable *renaissance* (rebirth) of the ancient conditions has thus to be ascribed to the conscious patriotism of this Hindu *avatāra* of the seventeenth century. As a specimen of the linguistic remaking of his fatherland may be presented the *Rāja-vyavahārakoṣa*¹³ (Dictionary of Royal Conduct) in Sanskrit prepared under his orders by Raghunātha Paṇḍit more or less in the form of *Amarakoṣa*.