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Administrative System of the Marathas c16: Chapter V. Other Aspects of Administration

Administrative System of the Marathas c16

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English

Contents

Chapter V. Other Aspects of Administration

1. Administration of Justice

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Shivaji's Maharashtra still retained her simple primitive method of administering justice. Elaborate rules of procedure, volumes of codified law, costly court houses were absolutely unknown. The village elders met in the Patil's office or before the village temple or under the spreading branches of a sacred fig tree to hear civil suits and administer common-sense justice. Some of these amateur judges were certainly illiterate, for they put their signs of *nangar*, *tagri*, *ghana*, or *katyar* whenever a signature was necessary. But they must have been conversant with the customary laws of their land. The *balutas* or village artisans were frequently summoned before the Panchayat to aid the judges with their invaluable knowledge of village history or tradition. But when no evidence was available, divine aid was freely invoked and the Marathas of those days had so much faith in the potency of truth that they fearlessly and sometimes with impunity grasped a red hot iron ball and plunged their hand into boiling ghi or oil to draw out a piece of metal or *rava.* These were not the only popular ordeals; ordeals by water, libation water, lamp and circumambulation of a sacred temple, were also known. The unknown author of *Shivaji Pratap* describes a peculiar ordeal of which we find no other instance. In an alleged case of adultery, two drops of blood, one each from the veins of the man and the woman, were taken and dropped into a cauldron full of boiling oil. But lo! they would not mingle; so the lady was honourably acquitted. For all we know this ordeal possibly had never been practised.

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Criminal cases were heard in the first instance by the Patil, a gentleman without much learning and hence unlikely to be familiar with the injunctions of the old Hindu law-givers like Manu and Yajnavalkya. But the Brahman Nyayadhish who heard appeals in both civil and criminal suits was as a matter of course well versed in the *shastras.* The Hazir Majalasis to hear final appeals perhaps met more often in the days of Shivaji and his immediate successors than during the Peshwa regime. And we very frequently come across two functionaries who seem to have silently slipped away from existence during the Peshwa days. These were the Sabha Naik or Judge President and the Mahaprashnika or Chief Interrogator whose duty appears to have been to examine and cross-examine the parties. Whether they were elected by their brother judges or nominated by the king we do not know. Perhaps an elderly member who commanded the respect of his co-villagers, assumed some sort of superiority over others as a matter of course and a younger member of the Panchayat perhaps volunteered to examine the parties in order to save his colleagues from that trouble.¹

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¹ The old method of administering justice was practically unaffected by the rise of the Peshwas and will be treated at a greater length in Book II.

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2. Education:

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Shivaji fostered and encouraged education in an indirect way. There was no organised education department under him. State-founded or state-aided schools were unknown. Learned scholars as in the days of yore attracted eager students from all parts of the country and the schools which thus grew formed the only centres of culture. Shivaji indirectly encouraged the foundation of these schools by making large grants in money or land to all the distinguished scholars of his time. Similar grants were made to physicians of note irrespective of their caste and creed and so the votaries of the science of medicine were permitted to carry on their studies and humanitarian endeavours in comparative ease and security. It was one of the duties of the Pandit Rao to test the merit of and assign a proper inam to the deserving candidates. This system of Dakshana grant for the encouragement of learning has survived Shivaji and the Peshwas.

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Many poets and literary men were attracted to Shivaji's court. Among them the most well known was Bhushan the Hindi poet. Jayaram the author of *Parnal Parvat Grahanakhyan* and Paramananda the author of *Shiva Bharat* wrote in Sanskrit. Their poetical efforts were munificently rewarded as were those of the celebrated ballad writers of the time, Ajnandas and Tulshidas.

3. Shivaji's Achievements

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We have seen that the civil and the military regulations of Shivaji had been framed mainly to meet the needs of his times and in this respect they were eminently successful. Engaged in a life-long war against his Muhammadan neighbours, Shivaji could not give his people that peace and tranquillity so necessary for the growth of commerce and industry. But he had reformed the revenue system of his kingdom, organised a careful survey of his lands, and substituted a fairly enlightened and efficient government for the tyranny of semi-independent revenue officers. He had organised an army that shattered the foundation of the Mughal Empire in the South. He was the father of the Maratha navy and the mercantile policy inaugurated by him had a very bright future. Born in 1627 he died at the age of fifty-three only, and during the short reign of thirty-five years he had not only founded a kingdom but created a nation. Yet we cannot admit that Shivaji was the most original of Indian rulers. For his revenue policy he was indebted to Malik Ambar. Some of his military regulations were copied from the Adilshahi code, and the system of branding horses of the cavalry was known in Hindustan even in Allauddin Khilji's time. Shivaji however enforced strict method where formerly there was a lack of it. The slightest irregularity did not escape his keen eyes and in personal attention to the minute details of he government perhaps he was not inferior to his great Mughal rival. We find him framing regulations about the proper style of official letters, we find him deliberating about the necessity of punctual payment of masons. He urges his cavalry officers to beware of the careless use of fire in the camp. They are warned to be more careful about storing hay and fodder for their animals. To the governor of a port he issues instructions for regulating the price of salt and nuts, and we cannot but wonder when we find the same man starting a literary movement which so vitally influenced the character of Marathi language. He employed an erudite scholar to find out Sanskrit synonyms for current Persian words and the *Rajvyavahar Kosh* was compiled.

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It has often been asked why did so many of Shivaji's institutions fail to survive him. Prof. Jadunath Sarkar attributes his failure to build up an enduring state mainly to caste rivalry. The caste system is not new to India and whatever may be its effects on the Maratha state, it cannot be said that the fate of Shivaji's civil and military institutions was much affected by it. The great bane of the country had been feudalism or the jagir system and this flourished in spite of caste rivalry. Shivaji had tried his best to abolish feudalism, but the great defect of his government was its autocratic character. Its success depended on the man at the helm. Sambhaji was an incompetent ruler and it did not take him long to undo his father's work. Rajaram was unable to effect or attempt any reform. Driven from his paternal home and besieged in the fort of Jinji, he had to conciliate his friends in all possible ways. His officers offered to conquer principalities in enemy possession on the sole condition that they should be allowed to hold their conquest in jagir. Thus Rajaram helped to revive feudalism and once it was revived, Shivaji's institutions were doomed to extinction. In the turmoil of war every law was held in abeyance and when a new order dawned after the struggle for existence was over, Shivaji's institutions had become a memory. Further concessions to the feudal chiefs had to be made during the civil war between Shahu and his Kolhapur cousin. And although feudalism was in theory condemned in a work on polity attributed to Ramchandra Pant Amatya, in practice every thing was done to foster its growth. After the death of Shahu the monarchy suffered still more in power and prestige and the Peshwas became the real heads of the state. But they did not or could not suppress the ever-growing feudal tendencies and created, either from policy or from need, new fiefs for their friends and followers. The result was that the central government grew weaker as the feudal chiefs waxed stronger and ultimately the whole fabric collapsed with a tremendous crash at the slightest collision with a western power. Both the Brahman and the Non-Brahman Barons equally contributed to that collapse and caste prejudices had very little to do with the decline and fall of the Maratha empire. Shivaji's civil institutions disappeared with the rejection of his ideal.

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