जीवनाचे परमोच्च शिखर

With his coronation, Shivaji reached the very highest point of his life's ascent. From this moment onward his old zeal and ambition began, little by little, to ebb away, and death came to him at a comparatively early age. This forceful and resolute man, within the space of the next four or five years, grew utterly worn down, both in body and in spirit. The tremendous speed and the unmatched daring with which he had, time after time, extricated himself from crisis after crisis and stamped his mark upon the soil of India — that same vigour now gradually slackened in the years that followed, until sudden, untimely death overtook him. The capture of Sinhagad, the subjugation of the Mores, the destruction of Afzal Khan, the humbling of Shaista Khan, the plundering of Surat's wealth, and finally the journey to Agra to meet the Badshah in person and his safe escape from captivity there — each of these feats surpassed the one before it, carrying him step by step, on an ever-rising staircase of fortune, toward its summit. Yet his experience in the north had taught him one hard truth: there was, for the present, no real possibility of bringing the Mughal Badshah to his knees. He could extend his conquests across Maharashtra, or at the very furthest to the borders of the southern Deccan, but he did not yet possess the strength to contend directly with the master of Delhi.

दैवगती व राजपुतांचे स्वप्न

The six years of Shivaji's life that followed his coronation were spent largely in mental anguish and disquiet. However hard a man strives, some outcomes remain beyond the reach of effort altogether — and it is exactly this that we call fate, daiva. The Gita's own principle, 'daivam chaivatra panchamam' — that fate is the fifth and decisive factor in every undertaking — proves inescapable here. Both Aurangzeb and Shivaji were, each in his own way, men of robust constitution, and yet it passes understanding that providence should allot one of them a lifespan of ninety years while the other barely reached the age of fifty. Illness had scarcely ever touched Shivaji before this; the one that finally came was to be his last. Aurangzeb, by contrast, suffered through numerous illnesses that at various times threatened his very life. A constant dread gnawed at Aurangzeb throughout his reign — the fear that the Rajput princes might one day rise against him and bring about his ruin. In time he did indeed wage open war upon the Rajputs, and he met failure in it; his own son Akbar, in revolt against him, fled south and took refuge under Sambhaji's protection in Maharashtra. Had Shivaji still been alive at that moment, the Marathas striking from the south and the Rajputs rising in the north could have combined their forces, and Aurangzeb would scarcely have been able to withstand the two together. It was precisely this suggestion that Sambhaji later put in writing to Ram Singh in a letter on the subject. The aspiration that a Hindu emperor should once again sit enthroned at Hastinapur had lived on in the popular imagination for centuries together, and once the Chhatrapati's coronation had taken place in Maharashtra, that old aspiration had at last set out upon the road toward realization. Nothing in it was inherently impossible. We must now turn to examine why it was not, after all, Shivaji's own hand that brought it to completion.

दक्षिण दिग्विजयाची योजना

As soon as the intense excitement surrounding the coronation had subsided, Shivaji and his close associates found themselves confronted with the central question: what now? They had assumed the grand and resounding title Simhasanadhishwar, 'Lord of the Throne' — yet the actual authority of that lord of the throne did not, in practice, extend beyond a small corner of Maharashtra. Power and valour both require a field in which to act, and that field needed to be secured without delay; everyone agreed on this principle. But when it came to practical possibility, Mughal power in the north was still far too deeply rooted to be uprooted with the strength currently at his command. The plan that won general approval, therefore, was this: first to conquer and consolidate strength in the south, and only thereafter to take up the great task in the north. In line with this plan, Shivaji's first duty was to bring his own full brother, Vyankoji (Ekoji), who was then serving the Muslim rulers at Tanjore, under his own protective fold. While this matter was still under consideration, Vyankoji's minister, Raghunath Narayan Hanmante — a man of unwavering loyalty to the Bhosale family — travelled up from Tanjore to Raigad to meet Shivaji. Negotiations conducted with him led to firm plans being laid for a great southern campaign of conquest, a digvijay of the Deccan and the Karnataka country.

सातार्‍यावरील आजार

After the coronation, Shivaji's health took a marked turn for the worse. In 1675, once the fort of Satara had come into his possession, he went there after the close of the monsoon to inspect it; while there he was struck by fever, and for two to three months his condition remained gravely unstable. Many around him became convinced that he would not recover, and word even spread abroad that Shivaji had died. References to this illness are found in the contemporary correspondence and newsletters of English traders of the period. Though he did eventually recover fully from this illness, from that time onward a profound change came over his temperament, one that those close to him could plainly see. The indomitable zeal that had once driven him now left him almost entirely, and in its place an irrepressible sense of weariness and remorse took root. His son's misbehaviour may well have been one contributing cause. But it seems chiefly to have been the conviction, formed during the Satara illness, that he would not survive it, which left him with the settled feeling that worldly existence was without real substance, that he no longer wanted the whole vast enterprise he had built — his mind grew restless and given to melancholy. This shade of indifference, of a will drained of desire, is amply visible in the record of his last four or five years' activity; the old zeal had plainly faded.

रामदासांची भेट व सज्जनगड

During his illness Shivaji developed an intense longing for the company of holy men. As soon as Samarth Ramdas learned of his condition, he travelled to Satara and met him there, and the two of them appear to have stayed together for a good many days afterward. Overcome with a spirit of renunciation, Shivaji sought to hand over his entire kingdom to Samarth outright, begging him to release him from this wearisome burden of worldly toil. Ramdas counselled him at length, in one way and another, and with great effort persuaded him to return once more to his duties, giving him his solemn word that Shivaji would always have his darshan whenever he wished it. Ramdas himself then came to live at the nearby fort of Parali, and it was from this time that the fort came to be known by its new name, Sajjangad. The depth of this bond of affection between the two men is plainly reflected in the inam sanad that Shivaji granted to the temple at Chafal, a document dated to Dasara of 1678 — that is, the 15th of September — by which time Shivaji had already returned from his campaign in Karnataka. From this it may reasonably be inferred that the period of Shivaji's despondency and detachment fell broadly within the year and a half following 1675. The very language of that sanad itself is deeply meaningful, and repays careful reading.