The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s9.t7.8

c14.s9.t7.8

From the history of the Netherlands in the sixteenth century also we can cite ideological parallels in connection with the rise of the Maratha power. The charges of the Dutch people (1560-80) against Philip II of Spain bear close analogy with what the Maratha saints and chroniclers of the seventeenth and perhaps of the eighteenth centuries make out against Aurangzeb, described in their own words as the Mlechchha and the Yavana tyrant in regard to the pre-Śivāji political and social conditions of the Deccan, nay, of India.³ It is the "terrors of the *kaliyuga*" that constitute Śivāji's *Apology*, so to say, corresponding to the *Apologia* of the Prince of Orange (1580). The following statement of the Dutch hero is in keeping with the spirit of the Maratha champions of Hindu liberty: