Administrative System of the Marathas c8.s6: 7. The King
Administrative System of the Marathas c8.s6
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7. The King
c8.s6.1
The king formed the great pivot on which rested this stupendous structure. His was the hand that worked this gigantic but by no means easy machine. Not only the officers in charge of the eighteen karkhanas and the twelve mahals, not only secretariat officers as the Fadnis, Sabnis and Potnis, but also their official superiors, the eight pradhans and the Chitnis, formed a vast array of clerks and military commanders to carry out the orders of the king and to execute his great designs. They were but so many machines, not inanimate it is true, not unconscious of the great part they were playing, but at the same time hardly having any independent existence. Even the Pandit Rao, the officer in charge of the ecclesiastical branch of the administration, whose Brahman birth and learning might have given him some advantage over his non-Brahman master, could hardly take any step without the cognisance and sanction of the king. Even Kalush, the all-powerful minister of Sambhaji, deemed it necessary to consult the king's pleasure before he could authorise the re-admission of a repentant renegade into his former caste after the necessary penance.³² Everything depended on the personal ability and qualities of the sovereign. There was nothing to check him except his own good sense and of course the constant fear of a formidable Muhammadan invasion. It was for this reason alone that Sambhaji found it so easy to subvert his father's system, the day after his accession to the throne. It is this very reason-again that impelled Rajaram, while sorely pressed by the victorious imperial army, to revive some of the old institutions his father had found so useful.
c8.s6.2
³² Rajwade, M. I.S., Vol. VIII, p. 36. For a further treatment of the subject, the reader is referred to Book II.
c8.s6.3
Sambhaji
c8.s6.4
The system required a strong and good ruler. After Shahu, there was none among Shivaji's descendants who possessed the requisite qualities, and that is why the Peshwas found it so easy to do away with the central government. The eight pradhans still continued, but the hereditary councillors found themselves in an anomalous situation. They enjoyed great fiefs, but were never in practice called upon to perform their civil duties. The Peshwa, in theory their equal, became in reality their superior. The king, their master, was a state prisoner. The Peshwa's Fadnis, originally an officer of no importance, gradually rose to very great power, and the central government was transferred from Satara to Poona. But through all these changes and revolutions, both bloody and bloodless, the village communities survived unaffected, and the Peshwas also found it convenient to continue the provincial governments as they existed in Shivaji's time.