Rajyabhishka

Rajyabhishka strikes us like almost the incidents of a romance neither the most powerful mogal empiror the immediately neighbouring kingdom of bijapur which both had strenoiusly tried to destroy him could prevent this ceremony form being performed nor could they nullify it during shivaji life by conquering him it is no wonder that his followers protection of bhavani the tutelary diety of shivaji nay they even looked upon him as an avantara of vishnu as the shiva bharatas describes in detail.

Powerful centres of activity phycicial, metal and moral are created by the will of god from time to time and in all climes. As carlyle has said institutions may disappear and kingdoms and nations but this will always remains namely the certainty of heroes being sent us and thier being worshipped when sent. One of such heroes indeed one of the few greatest heroes of the world was shivaji by his explotations his interpidity his resourceis fulness and undaunted courage in dufficult postions and moral greatness as respector of women and places of religious worship.

We will give in this book a connected account of shivajis lide and exploits from contemproaneous records of both indian and foreign rarely noticing the accounts given in later bakhars which usually exaggerate events and often invent them in thier attmept to show off shivaji ingenutity we will notice controversial or unimportant matters in notes given in small type here and there which the reader may if he likes pass over. A high ancestry is not a sine qua non of a heroes greatness and it matters little if malohi shivaji grand father was a cultivator or an ordianty bargir but it is nbow proved beyond doubt that the bhoslae family to which shivaji belinged was desecended from the of the bluest blood among rajputs and that corwned as king by gagabhat with vedic rites but we find that the same rahjput descent has been mentioned by jayaram rao who years before shivajjis coronation wrote a poem on shahji. There in dalip was wer find gransosn of lashmansen rana of chitod who came to the throne malohis form him and taking years for each genereation we properly find maloji flouroisng about in the deccan it is not ascertainity exactly who came to the deccan first nut the genealogy given by the chitnis that says devrajs son of bhosaji that rajputs familys come to the deccan from time of bedar and later of ahmedabad and bijapur indeed maharashtra was settleled originally by northen kshartiaras of the lunar race bhojas and yadavas in the and from the sixth century the deccan to seek fortune even ine eleventh the present leading marthas families in gthe deccan claim descent from these and also in the form other rajput families such as the nimblakars from paramaras and the jadhavas strange that the bhosale family which came to the deccan in the century desenct to seek a serviece under mohomden kings claims descent from the under of udaipur it is again possible that the sisodialsit it is again and the settled said to have lasted for twelve years from to and they easily got into serval vasvant patelships and of the district the nature of the is to rule and not to cultivate and we usually find the norhern as patels deshmuks in the deccans during mahomedan rule

These marathas families were originaly treated as on a par with northern families and we find that marraiges relations between them were usual this intercourse howerver ceased about the cnetury cor serbbverl reasons chielfy owing time caused by new high notions of purity about of blood bramims we find also sub divided about this time into the sections nothern and came into the power of the families of the south such as the nimbalkars and the jadhavas these also constitiuted their sub castes by counting thier famlies ther relations of the marathas fmailies sa of high limeage and the substrandar fo the buttheis bifuracton did not rajput families but thei did not find two families among the norhern namely the denas of bengal and the gahadhval rathods of kanauj stating in their inscriptions of that period that they came form the deccan on all these consisderations the claims of the bhosale.