Administrative System of the Marathas c27.s21: 3. Karkhanas
Administrative System of the Marathas c27.s21
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3. Karkhanas
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Let us now turn to the Karkhanas. There were eighteen of them and twelve mahals, as we have seen in Book I, and both of these terms are of Persian extraction. First organised in Shivaji's time they continued down to the close of the Peshwa period. They had been, in all probability, most of them copied from Muslim originals. Mr. Beveridge tells me that all of them had Persian synonyms. Firuz Shah Tughalak had thirty-six Karkhanas or royal establishments. The treasury (Khajina of Sabhasad), the treasury for precious stones (jawahir khana, Sabhasad), the mint (Tanksal, Sabhasad), the Harem (Daruni, Sabhasad), the Farash Khanah, the Abdar Khanah, the Imperial kitchen (Mudbak khana, Sabhasad), the Arsenal, the elephant stables (pilkhana), the horse stables, the camel stables, the gaukhana or cowsheds, are mentioned in the Ain-i-Akbari as forming different departments. A Mir Shikar⁴ is mentioned and the mention of hunting leopards and falcons under the same Ain leaves but little doubt that here we find the origin of Shivaji's Shikarkhana. Sabhasad, unlike Abul Fazl, gives no detailed account of these departments. But so far as the Shikarkhana is concerned the necessary informations can be fortunately culled from a much later work, the Peshwas' Bakhar. In the Shikarkhana of the second Madhava Rao, were seven or eight talking Mynahs and talking green parrots. There were several Chandols, (the pyramid-crested wood lark), several ducks, cormorants, several pairs of peacocks, one hundred or two hundred deer, hunting leopards, tigers and rabbits.⁵ An adequate number of keepers were appointed to look after these animals. This bakhar also tells us that these leopards were used for hunting. Although this small menagerie offers but a poor comparison to the grand hunting department of Akbar consisting of hundreds of animals and birds, yet there is little doubt that the Peshwa's Shikarkhana was an imitation of that of the Mughal Emperor.
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⁴ Blochman, Ain-i-Akbari, Vol. I, p. 282.
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⁵ Peshwanchi Bakhar, ed. Sane, pp. 111-112.
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In fact the Mughal influence had so strongly pervaded the different strata of the Hindu society that it could be perceived in their dress, in their manners and even in their religion and festivities. Thus a discerning observer might notice it even in the coronation darbar of Shivaji, the founder of the Hindu Padshahi and the recognised leader of the Hindu revivalists. While describing Shivaji's coronation Prof. Jadunath Sarkar remarks, "The coverings of the royal seat were a grotesque combination of Hindu asceticism and modern Mughal luxury: tiger skin below and velvet on the top!" But this was not all. "On the two sides of the throne, various emblems of royalty and government were hung from gilded lance-heads. On the right hand stood two large fish heads of gold with very big teeth, on the left several horses' tails (the insignia of royalty among the Turks) and a pair of gold scales on a very costly lance-head (the emblem of justice). All these had been copied from the Mughal court. At the palace gate were placed on either hand pitchers full of water covered with bunches of leaves, and also two young elephants and two beautiful horses, with gold bridles and rich trappings. These latter were auspicious tokens according to Hindu ideas."⁶
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⁶ Sarkar, Shivaji, First ed., p. 277.
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This was typical of the whole Maratha administrative system. It was a happy combination of Hindu and Muhammadan institutions. The Muslim conquerors came to India with readymade principles of government and finance but they were confronted in their new home with another set of principles and ideas, much older and in a sense more systematic than their own. To their credit they did not reject these old ideas that prevailed in their newly conquered kingdom nor did they set themselves to enforce their own principles at the point of the sword. When two civilisations meet under such circumstances they naturally interact on each other. The result was that while the Muhammadans borrowed something from their Hindu subjects, the Hindus in their turn got much in return from their Muslim rulers. Hindu influence was evident in the Muhammadan Government and many Muhammadan sects and subsects in India.⁷ And Muslim influence was equally evident in the Hindu literature of the time, in the Vaishnavism of Chaitanya and the Sikhism of Nanak. The Marathas founded their kingdom when this process of mutual influence and interaction had had free play for several centuries. And so in their literature, in their language, in their dress and customs. Muslim influence was clearly visible,
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⁷ The Timuride princes of Delhi had imbibed during their long sojourn in India many of the superstitious beliefs of the original Hindu inhabitants of the country. Their belief in astrology was probably characteristic of that age, but Sir Thomas Roe, the English ambassador at the Court of the Emperor Jahangir, speaks of one superstitious rite
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that is still current among the native Hindus and was undoubtedly of Hindu origin. Writes Sir Thomas Roe—"Then the king descended the staires with such an acclamation of Health to the king, as would have out-cryed cannons. At the staires foote, where I met him, and shuffled to be next, one brought a mighty carpe, another a dish of white stuffe like starch, into which he put his finger, and touched the fish, and un rubbed it on his fore-head; a ceremony used presaging good fortune." In that "mighty carpe" and "a dish of white stuffe like starch" it is not difficult to identify a *Rohit* fish and a pot of 'Dadhi,' things of good omen that every orthodox Hindu likes to touch and look upon when he sets forth from his home for a new place, even to-day. The Hindu and Muhammadan had lived side by side for so many centuries that they had naturally learnt to tolerate and unconsciously imbibe each other's social customs, common beliefs and even superstitious rites, and the process must have begun long before the conquest of India by Babar and his immediate successors. Towards the close of Tughlak period, the Muhammadans of India had earned such a notoriety for their heathenish practice among their co-religionists outside India that Timur regarded his invasion of India as a real Jehad; according to him most of the Indian Muhammadans were no better than heathens. In the *Malfuzat-i-Timuri* we read that the expedition was directed mainly against "the infidels and polytheists of India." The Muhammadans were neither infidels nor polytheists but the same authority informs us that in this country "there were those who called themselves Mussalmans but had strayed from the Muhammadan fold." From a description of some heretics left by Firuz Shah Tughlak it appears that some of the Muhammadan heretics were influenced by the *Tantras* while others followed the Vedantic system of thought and yet others had taken to idolatry. See Hinduism and Muhammadan Heretics, Surendranath Sen, Calcutta Review, January 1924.
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and in their government we naturally find a combination of two different sets of principles, indigenous and foreign, old and new, Hindu and Muhammadan. The basis was Hindu but the superstructure had many Muhammadan characteristics.