Administrative System of the Marathas (An Old Rare Book)

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Shivaji, born in 1627, captured Torna in 1646 and died in 1680 at the comparatively young age of fifty-three. Before his death he had founded a mighty Hindu kingdom in defiance of the Sultanates of Bijapur and Golkonda, then tottering to their fall, and the Chaghatai, miscalled Mughal Empire, then at the zenith of its power under Aurangzeb Alamgir. Within a decade of its founder's death, the infant Maratha power was faced with a serious crisis. The son and successor of Shivaji was captured and decapitated and the infant heir to the throne became a Mughal prisoner. Further expansion was out of the question, the very existence of the kingdom was threatened. The Marathas undeterred by the power, wealth and prestige of the empire engaged in a life and death struggle which ended in their favour. With the return of Shahu to his paternal kingdom opened a new era of conquest and expansion. The Maratha horsemen reached the extreme North-Western frontier of India, their horses drank the water of the Indus and the empire extended from sea to sea. The Maratha empire was apparently still in its full vigour when a conflict with a Western power brought about its disruption and fall. The last Hindu empire of India passed away after a chequered existence of 170 years.

It is commonly believed that this vast empire existed merely by plunder and robbery. An eminent English writer has described the Maratha generals as 'robbers, plunderers and scoudrels. But it is very difficult to understand how an empire could last for over a century and half by robbery and plunder alone, unless it had a surer and firmer basis of good government. Grant Duff does not answer this question. Ranade had set himself to this task and his brilliant chapters on the administrative institutions of Maharashtra served as an eye-opener to many, but he was cut off by death before his task was fully accomplished.

A comprehensive work on the administrative system of the Marathas was wanting, but materials for such a work had been fast accumulating. The scholarly labours and the patriotic devotion of Sane, Rajwade, Khare, Parasnis and a host of less known, but not less sincere, workers had brought to light such a mass of original documents, that it is a veritable Solomon's mine and they very first descent took me in the midst of treasures of high value and I felt my labour amply rewarded. I got the answer I had been seeking.

The Marathas were not mere robbers and plunderers. From their original documents I found that they had an excellent set of regulations for their own empire. Further investigation convinced me that these regulations and administrative institutions were not their own inventions, they had inherited them from their Hindu and Muhammadan predecessors. The administrative system of the Marathas is thus of surpassing interest. It explains the causes of the disruption and downfall of the last Hindu empire, it gives a history of the survival and development of the old Hindu administrative system, it supplies an important and interesting illustration of interaction of Hindu and Muslim principles on each other, and it helps us to under-stand the growth of the present British Indian administrative institutions, partly engrafted as they are on older Hindu and Muhammadan systems. This is indeed the justification for publishing this work which the toil of the last five years has produced.

Sources Of Information A comprehensive history of the Maratha administrative system is still a desideratum.

While dealing with the Peshwa period, we are confronted with such an amazing abundance of materials, that we can hardly expect to do justice to them. State-papers have been carefully preserved. Revenue regulations, instructions to re-venue collectors and higher officials, deeds of sale, and other documents, judgments in both civil and criminal suits, have come down to us in their hundreds and thousands. They give us a vivid picture of the government as it actually was in the Peshwa period. But when we approach the Shivaji period, we are confronted with such a searcity of materials as is most discouraging. Of state-papers we have but very few, and they are not very important either. Mr. Rajwade complains' that during his twenty years of labour and research, he has hardly come across twenty-five important Shivaji-papers. Most of these papers again are political and diplomatic correspondence, and do not enlighten us about the administrative system. Fortunately, however, some old documents, that cannot properly be styled as state-papers, have after ages seen light, thanks to the labour of Mr. V. K. Rajwade. These give us useful information about some of the early adherents of Shivaji, the history of their watans, sometimes an account of their deeds and exploits and often a long and exhaustive list of the taxes, cesses, and abwabs of those days. From these family papers of the old Sardars and Jagirdars we can frame a fairly accurate sketch of the administrative system of Shivaji, but these papers have to be used with extreme care and caution. Next in importance, are the bakhars of Marathi prose chronicles.

Supremely indifferent, like their Muhammadan teachers, to everything that affected the ordinary people, the Maratha chroniclers pay very little attention to the administrative system of their times and the economic condition of their country.

give lengthy accounts of battles, gossiping stories of the super-human deeds of their heroes, interesting anecdotes of well. known personages, and confine themselves mainly to the narration of political events. Consequently, we learn very little from them. Sabhasad, who wrote in 1694, is perhaps the most sensible as he is the earliest of Shivaji's biographers. Condensed and concise in style, he devotes a few pages to Shivaji's regulations, both civil and military. Chitragupta, who elaborated Sabha-sad's work, added a few stories and verses of his own com-position. The only additional information that we obtain from Chitragupta is a short page where he enumerates the duties of the secretariat officers. Malhar Ram Rao Chitnis, who wrote his bakhar long after Sabhasad, does not give us any additional information about the administrative system. His Rajniti is a treatise on polity, in which he compiles the theories of public administration from old Sanskrit works. It could not, therefore, have any bearing on the actual government of Maharashtra as it then existed, although the duties of the eight Pradhans might probably have been compiled from some old papers. Shivadigvijaya, the most voluminous work of its kind, is full of legends and impossible stories, but has not a word to say about the working constitution of Maharashtra in Shivaji's days. The only thing we should note, here is that Messrs. Dandekar and Nandurbarkar, the joint editors of Shivadigvijaya, have failed to prove their contention, that it is the work of Khando Ballal, son of Balaji Avaji. It is in all probability a very recent work, and consequently, its evidence has but little weight with the modern student, who aspires to study history as a science. The same editors have published another bakhar, Shri Shivaji Pratap, which is nothing but a compilation of myths and legends. The anonymous author had not only no historical training, but he seemed to lack historical knowledge altogether. This bakhar is, therefore, absolutely useless both for a reconstruction of the political history of Maharashtra, and for the compilation of an account of Shivaji's administrative system. Very recently a sixth bakhar has been published by Mr. Bhave in his Marathi Daftar. It is only an elaboration of Sabhasad. The anonymous author has copied freely from an old manuscript of Sabhasad's bakhur, and his own additions are not at all trustworthy.