Magnificent as is the scenery of the Western Ghauts of India throughout
their range, it is nowhere, perhaps, more strikingly beautiful than
in the neighbourhood of the great isolated plateau which--rising
high above the mountain-ranges around it, and known under the name
of Maha-bul-eshwur, from the temple at the source of the sacred
river Krishna on its summit--is now the favourite summer retreat and
sanatorium of the Bombay Presidency. Trim roads, laid out so as to
exhibit the beauties of the scenery to the best advantage--pretty
English-looking cottages, with brilliant gardens, and a considerable
native town, are now the main features of the place; but at the period
of our tale it was uninhabited, except by a few Brahmuns and devotees,
who, attracted by the holiness of the spot, congregated around the
ancient temple, and occupied the small village beside it. Otherwise
the character of the wild scenery is unchanged. From points near the
edges of the plateau, where mighty precipices of basalt descend sheer
into forests of ever-lasting verdure and luxuriance, the eye ranges
over a sea of rugged mountain-tops,--some, scathed and shattered peaks
of barren rock--others with extensive flat summits, bounded by naked
cliffs which, falling into deep gloomy ravines covered with dense
forests, would seem inaccessible to man.
To some readers of our tale, this scenery will be familiar; but to
others it is almost impossible to convey by description any adequate
idea of its peculiar character, or of the beauty of the ever-changing
aërial effects, that vary in aspect almost as the spectator turns from
one point to another. Often in early morning, as the sun rises over
the lower mists, the naked peaks and precipices, standing apart like
islands, glisten with rosy tints, while the mist itself, as yet dense
and undisturbed, lies wrapped around their bases, filling every ravine
and valley, and glittering like a sea of molten silver.
Again, as the morning breeze rises in the valleys below, this vapour
breaks up slowly: circling round the mountain summits, lingering in
wreaths among their glens and precipices, and clinging to the forests,
until dissipated entirely by the fierce beams of the sun. Then,
quivering under the fervid heat, long ridges of rugged valleys are
spread out below, and range beyond range melts tenderly into a dim
distance of sea and sky, scarcely separated in colour, yet showing
the occasional sparkle of a sail like a faint cloud passing on the
horizon. Most glorious of all, perhaps, in the evening, when, in the
rich colours of the fast-rising vapours, the mountains glow like fire;
and peak and precipice, forest and glen, are bathed in gold and crimson
light; or, as the light grows dimmer, shrouded in deep purple shadow
till they disappear in the gloom which quickly falls on all.
Westward from this great mountain plateau, and divided from it by a
broad deep valley clothed with forests, the huge mountain of Pertâbgurh
rises with precipitous sides out of the woods and ravines below.
The top, irregularly level, furnished space for dwelling-houses and
magazines, while ample springs of pure water sufficed for the use of
a large body of men, by which it could be easily defended. At various
periods of time--by the early Mahratta chieftains of the country in
remote ages, and afterwards by their Mussulman conquerors--walls and
towers had been added to the natural defences of the place, as well
as strong gateways, protected by bastions and loopholed traverses, on
the only approach to the summit--a rugged pathway, which could hardly
be called a road. Under very ordinary defence, the place was perfectly
impregnable to all attacks by an enemy from without; and, at the period
of our tale, it was held as his capital and choicest stronghold, among
many such fastnesses in those mountains, by Sivaji Bhóslay, a man
destined to play a conspicuous part in the history of his country and
people in particular, and of India at large.
We have already informed the reader, in a somewhat desultory manner
perhaps, for we are not writing his history, of the attempts made by
Sivaji to establish an independent power; and, by taking advantage of
the weakness and distraction of the kingdom of Beejapoor, of which he
was a vassal, on the one hand, and of the ambitious designs of the
Emperor Aurungzeeb on the other, to raise himself to a position in
which he could secure the actual administration, and eventually the
sovereignty, of his native wilds.
Hindu history is in all cases unsatisfactory; and that of the early
Mahratta chiefs and principalities of the Dekhan eminently so. On the
invasion of the Dekhan by Alla-oo-deen, nephew of the then King of
Delhi, in A.D. 1294, the fort and city of Deogurh, now Doulatabad, was
held by Rajah Ramdeo Jadow, who appeared then to have been prince of
the whole country. Whether he was so or not, whether the chiefs of the
wild tracts of the Ghauts and provinces lying on the western sea-coast
were his tributaries or vassals, or whether they were actually
independent of each other, has never been ascertained; but, on the
downfall of the princely house of Jadow, no other ruler or chieftain
seems to have made any resistance, and the Mahomedans, gathering
strength, and founding a kingdom at Gulburgah, in the centre of the
Dekhan, gradually subdued the whole tract, establishing garrisons in
the wildest parts, fortifying hills not already used as strongholds,
and improving the defences of others, in that noble and picturesque
style of fortification which now excites our wonder and admiration.
One of the Mahratta families of ancient native nobility, though not
of the highest grade, were the Bhóslays. The Jadows, though no longer
possessing princely power, had descended into the rank of landed
proprietors, or hereditary officers, under the ancient Hindu tenure,
of the districts over which their ancestors had once held sway. Under
ordinary circumstances, an alliance between the families would have
been rejected by the Jadows; but one fell out nevertheless, and after a
strange manner.
At the marriage of a mutual friend, Shahji Bhóslay, then a pretty
boy, was present with his father, and the head of the family of the
Jadows with his daughter, Jeejee, a child younger than the boy Shahji.
The children began to play together, and the girl's father remarked
jocosely what a pretty couple they would make. The remark was heard by
the boy's father, who claimed it as a promise of betrothal, and, after
some discussion, and objection as to disparity of rank, the children
were eventually married. From these parents sprung Sivaji, who, with
his mother, as remarkable a person in many respects as himself, became
the originators and leaders of the renewed independence of the Hindus
of the Dekhan.
The women of India, particularly those of the higher classes and
families, are invariably the treasuries of family events, and of deeds
of departed or existent greatness. Jeejee Bye, an ambitious, perhaps
unscrupulous woman, strove hard to excite her husband, Shahji Bhóslay,
to exertion in the Hindu cause. She filled his mind with legends of
the Jadows' power; she sought out the histories of his own family; she
urged him to assert his right to districts in sovereignty of which he
was only the official head; and she actively canvassed all the heads of
the Mahratta families, with a view to a combined resistance against the
Mahomedan powers, then beginning to show symptoms of a final decadence.
And not without effect. Shahji, the servant and vassal of the Emperor
of Delhi as of the King of Beejapoor, rebelled in turn against both;
was restless and unfaithful, lacking, while a bold, enterprising
partisan soldier, the higher qualities which could direct and take
advantage of such movements. He was frequently imprisoned, fined, and
otherwise punished, but nothing checked his wife's ambition. Left to
herself during his long absences and captivities with her young son
among their native wilds, surrounded by rude retainers, she turned to
him as soon as he could comprehend her plans; and by the mother and son
those designs were sketched out which, in respect of utter hopelessness
at first, and splendid success afterwards, have few comparisons in the
world's history.
As the boy grew up, his immediate retainers joined him in wild
enterprises against the Mahomedans, which to the people savoured
of madness, but which, as they increased in boldness of design and
execution, were believed to be the deeds of one especially protected
by the Goddess Bhowani, the tutelar divinity of the Jadow family. His
mother, an ardent votary, pretended to be occasionally visited by
the goddess in person, and, filled with her divine afflatus, spoke
prophecy. Her son believed in her inspiration: and gradually his
friends, Maloosray, Palkur, and others, with a superstitious faith,
believed also. Undisciplined, often unarmed men of the Mawuls, or
mountain valleys above the Ghauts, who were called Mawullees, and
of those below the mountains towards the sea, called Hetkurees,
joined the young leader: scaled mountain forts, or descended into
the plains beyond the valleys, gathering arms and booty, occupying
Moslem garrisons, putting their defenders to the sword, and never
relinquishing what they had obtained.
So year after year passed, and the young Sivaji, as he grew stronger,
became more daring and enterprising. Originally a few hundreds of
half-naked, ill-armed mountain peasants, his forces of Mawullees and
Hetkurees at last numbered many thousands of active, determined men. He
had possession of some of the strongest mountain forts in the Western
Ghauts; he had built, and was building, defences to other isolated and
naturally almost inaccessible mountains. He was arming them with cannon
purchased by stealth from the Portuguese of Goa, or cast by his own
skilful artificers; and as he gained more perfect local strength, he
was silently extending his intrigues to all the Mahratta families of
ancient Maharástra by agents like Moro Trimmul, and awaiting the time
patiently, till all could rise to overthrow the Mussulman governments
which held them in subjection.
Had those governments, after the spirit of the earlier Mussulman
invaders of the Dekhan, been intolerant of Hindus, denied them
privileges of worship, defiled their temples, confiscated their
ancestral rights, or otherwise harassed and oppressed them,--it
is probable that Shahji's first attempts towards throwing off the
Mahomedan yoke would have met with better success. But, on the
contrary, there was now little or no oppression or interference with
them in any way; and many of the Mahratta chieftains not only held
estates in fief for service, but joined the armies of the Mahomedan
kings, and fought with them bravely and faithfully. We have ourselves a
counterpart of this, in some respects, in the Norman occupation of our
own country; inasmuch as, while some Saxon thanes then held themselves
aloof, and retired to the management of their own estates, others were
found who joined the invaders, or, gradually imitating their manners,
became incorporated with them.
That Sivaji's prospects had assumed a more encouraging form than any
of his father's, may easily be imagined from the method in which they
had been maintained. The Dusséra, or festival of Bhowani, throughout
Maharástra, of 1657, the year of which we write, was to show, by a
private muster of the people, what forces were available for a general
rising; and after that it would be determined how they were to be
employed.
We know what the object of Maloosray's mission to Beejapoor had
been, and its result. Sivaji had heard already by express from the
capital, of the death of the Wuzeer, the discovery of some of his own
correspondence by the King, and the acceptance of the gage by Afzool
Khan to undertake a campaign against him with a picked army. He had not
heard since, nor had Maloosray arrived; but Sivaji knew that Afzool
Khan was no laggard in war, and that he must prepare himself to meet
the emergency.
A fascination for sacred plays which had possessed him from childhood,
was a strange peculiarity of this man's character. As Sivaji grew up,
no distance, no personal danger, deterred him from being present at
any which could by any possibility be reached. Sometimes openly, and
more frequently in a peasant's or common soldier's garb, the young
prince, with a few chosen associates, would appear at places where his
arrival was incomprehensible, and his disappearance equally abrupt and
mysterious. In the latter days, these "Kuthas," as they are termed,
became means of assembling his men without attracting suspicion; but
his adherents well knew that the most exciting enterprises immediately
followed them.
Soon after the arrival of the news from Beejapoor, notice of one to
be held at Pertâbgurh had been sent through the country, and from the
earnestness and celerity with which the orders were circulated from
village to village, the people at large were assured of the proximity
of some notable event, and hoped, in their own expressive phrase, that,
at last, the "fire would light the hills."
With this partial digression, and introduction to the Rajah's play, the
day of which had arrived, our history will proceed.