Administrative System of the Marathas c18.s1.1

c18.s1.1

We tread on firmer ground when we come to the Peshwa period. Under the able leadership of the Bhat Peshwas, the Maratha empire rapidly expanded, the Maratha heroes carried their victorious banner from one end of India to the other, and the hoarded wealth of Hindustan filled the coffers of the southern warriors. Prosperity and wealth naturally spurred the literary activities of the Marathas and numerous *bakhars* were written to immortalise the valiant achievements not only of the Peshwa and Shahu Chhatrapati but of lesser chiefs as well. The Dabhades, the Gaikwads, the Bhonsles, the Patwardhans, the Sindhia and the Holkar, all found or employed some able chronicler to compile the history of their respective families.¹ Two chronicles of the *Panipat disaster* have come down to us and the famous prince who led the Maratha army on that fateful day was not left without a biography. As in the old days stirring accounts of national triumphs and national disasters were supplied by those popular bards—the *shahirs*, who wrote not for the learned few but for the teeming masses toiling in the fields and forests, hills and dales, towns and hamlets of the Maratha country. But fortunately we have not to rely on the beautiful ballads of the *shahirs* or on the charming narrative of the chroniclers for an account of the administrative institutions of the Peshwas. We have more reliable materials in the contemporary records and state papers, carefully and methodically preserved in the *Huzur Daftar* or imperial secretariat at Poona.