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The Mahrattas of Western India look back to Sivaji as the founder of their political power, which lasted down to 1817, and have lately instituted an annual celebration of Sivaji as the hero of the Mahratta race. One great blot rests on Sivaji's career. In one campaign he invited the Mahomedan general opposing him to a personal conference, and stabbed him while in the act of embracing him.
When Sivaji died, in 1680, his son Sambaji proved a much less competent successor; but the Maratta power was already established. Aurangzib directed his arms not so much against the Marattas as to the overthrow of the great kingdoms of the Deckan. When he turned against the Marattas, they met his operations by the adoption of guerrilla tactics, to which the Maratta country was eminently adapted.
It was at one of these Sivaji celebrations in 1897 that Mr. Tilak abandoned himself to the pro-Indian and anti-British feeling, glorifying Sivaji's use of the knife upon foreigners. "Great men are above common principles of law," ... he said.
That man was Sadasheo Rao, the cousin and minister of the Mahratta leader, the Peshwa, into whose hands had fallen the sway of Mahratta power. For their titular head, the descendant of Sivaji the original founder, was a puppet, almost a prisoner, such as we, not many years ago, considered the Mikado of Japan.
A form of Vishnuism, possessing a special local flavour, is connected with the Maratha country and with the names of Nâmdev, Tukârâm and Râmdâs, the spiritual preceptor of Śivaji.
A holy hermit, Yogi, and Magus, who had inhabited these caves for "many centuries," imparted this secret to Sivaji, the celebrated leader of the Mahratta armies. Like Tanhauser, in Wagner's opera, the unconquerable Sivaji spent seven years of his youth in this mysterious abode, and therein acquired his extraordinary strength and valour.
Himself occupied in other parts of the empire, Aurangzib left lieutenants to deal with Sivaji; and since he never trusted a lieutenant, the forces at their disposal were insufficient or were divided under commanders who were engaged as much in thwarting each other as in endeavouring to crush the common foe. Hence the vigorous Sivaji was enabled persistently to consolidate his organisation.
So she took her sitar and sat in the windowseat and sang a song of old days that had been sung by a girl of her profession in an armed camp on the eve of a great battle the day before the Fords of the Jumna ran red and Sivaji fled fifty miles to Delhi with a Toorkh stallion at his horse's tail and another Lalun on his saddle-bow.
Sivaji is a kind of Indian Ilia Moorometz, though his epoch is much nearer to our times. He was the hero and the king of the Mahrattas in the seventeenth century, and the founder of their short-lived empire. It is to him that India owes the weakening, if not the entire destruction, of the Mussulman yoke.
In spite of persecution by the Brahmans, these meetings became very popular and were even attended by the great Śivaji. His creed is the same as that of Nâmdev and finds expression in verses such as these. "This thy nature is beyond the grasp of mind or words, and therefore I have made love a measure. I measure the Endless by the measure of love: he is not to be truly measured otherwise.
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