Chhatrapathi Shivaji

[Bharatvarsh]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Whatever its origins, the term was certainly well established in official usage by the 1670s, when the Maratha sovereign Shivaji ordered the preparation of a thematic Sanskrit thesaurus that would reduce the excessive use of "Yavani" (Islamic) terms of statecraft. Bakhair is listed in a chapter dealing with specialized terms used by recordkeepers and accountants (lekhanvarga) of the Rajvyavaharkosa, and given the Sanskrit equivalent akhyayika.42Akhyayika itself is defined in a classical Sanskrit thesaurus as uplabdhartha—obtained or received knowledge—in meaning therefore, exactly the same as the South Asian usage of khabar.43

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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The above-cited officials of Anjanvel certainly saw the coronation of the Maratha sovereign Shivaji in 1674 as an epoch-making event. That act was the culmination of a campaign that both drew on and reinforced local and regional patriotism. Shivaji began raising a local militia in the 1640s and seized some crucial strongholds in western Maharashtra from his nominal overlord, the Adilshahi sultan. The sultan's ministers sent threatening letters warning the local gentry that their heads would be struck off if they connived with him. Shivaji reassured a wavering supporter in a message that subtly highlighted his own rootedness in the locality: "Rohidesvara, the original presiding deity of your valley, who exists in self-created form next to the sendri tree on the plateau at the crest of your peak, has assured me success."65 Shivaji succeeded in founding an independent kingdom that survived a full-scale Mughal assault. The introductory chapter to Ramacandra Pant's treatise on statecraft was written in 1717: "This is the kingdom that was assailed by a powerful enemy like [the Mughal emperor] Aurangzeb and still beat him back. Aurangzeb focused all his forces and expended all his resources against it, but failed to conquer; bootless, disheartened he took himself off to the land of death. And Aurangzeb was master of fifty-four kingdoms; endowed with wealth and soldiers second to none, of whom it was famously said 'either the lord of Delhi or the lord of the world' [are equal in wealth]."66 Dynastic identity thus merged with and built on regional pride, and the protean bakhar was turned to yet another narrative: the construction of a common glorious past. 30 
      Not surprisingly, therefore, one of the most famous early bakhars—that detailing the life and deeds of Shivaji, was written in 1694, during the hard days of the struggle with the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, whose armies had overrun most of Maharashtra. Its author Krishnaji Anant Sabhasad framed text as an answer to King Rajaram's question: "My father achieved great feats of arms, confronted four empires—such was his valor. That being so, how has Aurangzeb been able to come and wreck fort after fort? You are an old and knowledgeable servant of the state—write an account of his [Shivaji's] deeds [caritra] from the very beginning." Significantly enough, the text, while opening with an invocation of the deeds of the founder-hero, ends by speaking in terms of a regional patria ruled by a Maratha king: "He proclaimed his dominance from the Narmada river up to Ramesvara [traditional southern extremity of India] and captured the land. Adalshai, Kutubshai, Nizamshai, Moglai—these four empires as well as the twenty-two empires from beyond the seas were kept in check and a new empire founded; a Maratha Padshah seated himself on the throne as a Chhatrapati [sovereign monarch]." It is perhaps not without significance that, while the work opens by describing itself as a caritra (biography), the closing sentences refer to it as a bakhar.67 The Maratha identity had been foregrounded from at least the 1670s, when a dependent of the newly crowned Chatrapati wrote a Sanskrit epic on his career. It begins with Shivaji's grandfather, Malavarman, who is emphatically described as a Maratha king ruling in Maharashtra.68 The identity was also extensively invoked by Shivaji's sons and successors during the darkest periods of the war with the Mughals.69
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