Administrative System of the Marathas c7.s4: French Sources
Administrative System of the Marathas c7.s4
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French Sources
c7.s4.1
Dr. Dellon, a French physician, visited the western coast of India and published a short account of his travels on his return home. The small volume was so interesting that it was translated into English shortly after its publication. He praises Shivaji as a tolerant and liberal prince. But his information was derived mainly from hearsay.
c7.s4.2
Many French travellers came to this country when Shivaji rose to power. Of these the works of Bernier and Tavernier are well known. Both of them made reference to Shivaji's military power and the terror he created in the minds of his enemies. Bernier alludes to the respect and consideration Shivaji had shown for persons of character and piety during the first sack of Surat. Monsieur de Thevenot visited India in 1666. He devotes an entire chapter to Shivaji, but his account of the great Maratha's career is hopelessly inaccurate. According to Thevenot, Shivaji was born at Bassein and was thirty-five in 1664, when he sacked Surat. He does not mention the Afzal Khan incident and credits Shivaji with the capture of Shaista Khan's daughter, who was treated with all honour and respect to which she was entitled. His account of Shivaji's flight from the Imperial Court is also untrustworthy. Martin's *Memoirs* is of great importance to students of military history; the extracts published by Prof. J. N. Sarkar in the *Proceedings of the Historical Records Commission*, however, throw no light on the civil institutions of Shivaji. An interesting account of Shivaji's Karnatak expedition has been left by the Jesuit missionaries of Madura. This is available in Bertrand's *Mission de Madure* and an English translation of the relevant portion will be found in the appendices of *History of the Madura Nayaks* by Prof. R. Sathinathayer of Trichinopoly. The Jesuit letters substantially corroborate the Maratha account of the expedition and as Shivaji undoubtedly made an adequate arrangement for the government of the conquered country, we may unhesitatingly hold that the aim of this expedition was conquest and annexation and not merely plunder as suggested by Prof. Jadunath Sarkar.⁶ Like Martin's *Memoirs* the contemporary Jesuit letters compiled by Bertrand and the earliest French biographies of Shivaji are of very little use to a student of his administrative system.
c7.s4.3
⁶ Prof. Sarkar himself admits that civil Governors were appointed for the newly conquered tracts and an army of occupation was left to quell all disturbances and risings. He goes further and says—"The districts that he retained in Central and Eastern Mysore as the result of his Karnatak expedition, had to be connected with his old dominions by the conquest of the Southern corner of Bijapur." This was effected and "the country was formed into a regular province of Shivaji's kingdom and placed under Janardan Narayan Hanumante as Viceroy" (Shivaji and His Times, pp. 405-407). It is difficult to reconcile this with the Professor's dictum that, "It is incredible that a born strategist like Shivaji could have really intended to annex permanently a territory on the Madras coast, which was separated from his own dominions by two powerful and potentially hostile states like Bijapur and Golkonda, and more than 700 miles distant from his capital." (Shivaji and His Times, First edition, pp. 366-67). This is, however, not the place to examine this question in detail.