इतिहासातील अकल्पित घटकांचा विचार

No sooner had one crisis been surmounted than a fresh and even harder trial would arise to take its place — such, it seems, was the unbroken chain that made up Shivaji's life. And each new complication that emerged proved, if anything, more unavoidable than the one before it. When Aurangzeb ascended the Mughal throne, no one could have guessed at the outset that he would give the history of the Marathas so drastic a turn. Had the natural course of events run its way, and had Dara Shikoh succeeded Shah Jahan instead of Aurangzeb, the destiny of Maharashtra would surely have unfolded quite differently. History, therefore, is not merely the unfolding of cause and effect in orderly succession; students of the subject must also keep constantly in mind the role played by the unforeseen and the inscrutable workings of fate — what in English is sometimes called the accidental element in history. A trifling, apparently insignificant event can suddenly deflect the whole course of ongoing affairs onto a wholly different track; this is what is meant by fortune or destiny, and history, in the end, is largely made up of just such turns.

स्वराज्यविस्तार व मोगल अधिकाऱ्यांस आव्हान

With each passing day Shivaji found himself drawn ever deeper into the great labour of building Swarajya. Whatever territory he was compelled to campaign through tended, in time, to be absorbed in part into his growing kingdom, and after the Surat raid his old Maval domain began to spread steadily northward — a process for which definite causes can also be traced. Shivaji addressed open letters to the Mughal officers of the Deccan, taunting them: 'For three years now your great generals have marched forth to seize our territory. The emperor gives you his orders, and you write back to him that Shivaji will soon be captured. Yet in this rugged country of ours your efforts avail nothing. Are you not ashamed to send the emperor false reports merely to inflate your own reputation? Why do you not write and tell him the plain truth of matters here? Shaista Khan boasted for three whole years, and the world knows what came of it. Write to the emperor whatever you please — I shall continue to do my duty regardless. Remember well what befell Afzal Khan.' The Surat plunder had, meanwhile, greatly emboldened Shivaji; he and his helpers grew ever more confident in the conviction that, if only they were willing to make the effort, there was no shortage of money to be had. With the growing sense that stores of wealth lay scattered in many places merely waiting to be seized by those bold enough to try, Shivaji's spies fanned out ever more widely across the land.

दक्षिणेकडील विजय व जलदुर्गांची उभारणी

Having sent the Surat plunder back to Raigad, Shivaji lost no time in bringing Rajapur, Malvan, Vengurla, and other places under his control, extending his kingdom southward as well. From the Sawant chief of Wadi he obtained the celebrated sword known as Bhavani, and won the Sawant over as an ally. When Baji Ghorpade of Mudhol and the Bijapur sardar Khawas Khan marched against him, Shivaji utterly destroyed both. The year 1664, taken as a whole, thus marks the very high-water mark of Shivaji's valour and enterprise: it was in this period that he newly built the two mighty sea forts of Sindhudurg at Malvan and the neighbouring Vijaydurg, securing the defence of the entire western coastline. A contemporary poet, in the Purushottama-Shivakavya, wrote of him in a Sanskrit verse that wherever Shivaji chose to dig, wealth sprang up for him exactly as he wished, for to a man of true merit the whole earth turns to gold. A story told of this good fortune runs that, while on his way to Torna, the branch of a tree once caught and halted his palanquin; Shivaji ordered his men to dig at that very spot to see why the palanquin had been obstructed, and on digging they turned up pots of buried treasure. This aura of extraordinary fortune attending Shivaji was, at the time, common knowledge throughout the land.

शहाजीराजांचें निधन व जिजाबाईंचें दुःख

No sooner had Shivaji brought the Surat plunder home and gone to pay his respects to his mother than tragic news reached him of his father's death. Shahaji Raje had at the time been engaged in service of the Bijapur kingdom; having captured Bidnur, he was returning to Bangalore when he halted at Hodigeri near Basavapattan on the bank of the Tungabhadra. Word came that game was close at hand, and caught up in the excitement of the hunt he spurred his horse in pursuit; by ill fortune the horse's leg caught in a hole in the ground, and both horse and rider fell — Shahaji died on the spot. His son Venkoji Raje came and performed the last rites. The date of his death was 23 January 1664. The grief that overwhelmed Jijabai, his widow, is beyond description; she insisted on becoming sati and following her husband onto the pyre, but out of consideration for Shivaji's feelings she at length abandoned that resolve. Once Raigad had been built up as a fortress, Jijabai, now advanced in years, found its steep ascent too much to bear, and so Shivaji had a separate residence built for her at the foot of the hill, at Pachad, where she spent her remaining years. Whenever he went up to the fort or came down from it, Shivaji would always call first upon his mother before turning to any other business. Pachad remains to this day a place held in reverence; it contains a beautifully built stepped well of sweet water, which still calls to mind, for the devout who visit it, the memory of that saintly woman. Taken together, then, the beginning of Swarajya in 1644, its consolidation by 1654, and the extraordinary feats of 1664 mark three successive decades of a rising arc in Shivaji's life — a rise that would find its culmination in the fourth decade, in 1674, crowned by the great ceremony of his coronation.