सुबुद्धीचा चंद्रमा मावळला — पन्हाळ्यावरील समेट

On this occasion Shivaji did not add to his son's hurt by any show of harshness. Instead he did everything conciliation could accomplish to bring Sambhaji back to his senses. He remained with his son at Panhala until 1 January 1680. Father and son sat together at length, calmly discussing what hardships Shivaji had endured across his whole life and what duty now lay ahead for the preservation of the kingdom. He had his officers draw up a complete inventory of the state's entire wealth — treasury, workshops, land-forts and sea-forts, territory, goods, jewels and precious stones, gold and silver, cannon, cloth, and every other item of value — all counted, listed, and recorded (these lists survive and have since been published). In this way Shivaji sought to show his son, by concrete example, what a single determined man could achieve. He explained to him the weight of Paramananda's own phrase, 'suvikrantasya lokasya sarvam eva mahitalam' — 'to the man of true valour, the entire earth lies open' — hoping the son would grasp its meaning for his own life. But no awakening of duty came to Sambhaji. It was not that valour was wanting in him; rather, enslaved as he was to his vices, even when he glimpsed his own faults, mere words of counsel could do nothing to remove them — for the power of judgment grows feeble wherever addiction holds sway. Shivaji and everyone else close to him knew perfectly well that the administration of the kingdom could never safely be entrusted to Sambhaji's hands. Yet how was this hot-tempered young man to be set aside? To keep him under confinement was equally impossible, for who had the strength to actually restrain him? Cornered on every side by this dilemma, Shivaji, in a mood of utter despondency, went to Sajjangad to see Shri Samarth. He left Sambhaji behind at Panhala, placing him under the watchful eye of Janardanpant Hanmante.

समर्थांच्या सहवासांतील शेवटचे दिवस

Samarth's own diary notes (vaakenishi) record the visit in these words: 'Shivaji Maharaj came for a visit on Paush Shuddha 9, and remained until Magh Shuddha 15. Daily ceremonies of great splendour were held throughout. Samarth spoke of many matters touching the affairs of the kingdom, and also discoursed at length on spiritual subjects. For three days Raje sat absorbed in samadhi. In the course of many conversations, Samarth gave him to understand that Maharaj would soon depart for the eternal abode. On Magh Shuddha 14, having taken his leave, he departed for Raigad.' This brief record reveals Shivaji's state of mind with striking clarity. From 1 January 1680 until roughly the beginning of February, for nearly a month and a quarter, Shivaji remained entirely inactive, sitting in stillness — a thing that happens nowhere else in the whole of his active life. Of that period, three days were spent in actual samadhi, that is, abstaining altogether from food and drink, absorbed in a trance-like stillness. A great deal of discussion and negotiation passed between father and son during these weeks, yet no resolution was ever reached. By its end, Samarth himself had become convinced that Shivaji would not survive what he was carrying. It appears, then, that this crushing anxiety over the fate of the kingdom — a wound to the heart in the truest sense — was what brought this great man's life to its premature close. In the end it was a week's fever that provided the immediate occasion. Two men of extraordinary intellect, Shivaji and Samarth alike, found themselves powerless before the circumstances closing in around them. The notion that 'the king may die, but the kingdom endures' — the practice of impersonal, institutional continuity in government — was a thing that took shape only gradually, over time, in Europe; that age had not yet dawned in India. Shivaji's entire system of government remained, to its very foundation, bound up with the person of the ruler himself.

शिवाजी महाराजांचा अंतकाळ

On the full moon day of Magh, Shivaji left Sajjangad for Raigad; and just two months later, on the full moon of Chaitra, he passed away — that is, the interval ran from early February to 2 April of the year 1680. In these two months no political act of any particular note took place. The record shows only that on 7 March Rajaram's sacred-thread ceremony (munj) was performed, and on 15 March his marriage — to the daughter of Pratap Rao Gujar. On 22 March, fever set in, and from it Shivaji never recovered. Behind him, the whole apparatus of the state lay unsettled; no notable final arrangements or instructions of consequence were left on record. The blow Shivaji had suffered through Sambhaji's misconduct must be counted, in the end, as the final stroke that broke him. Through his last four months he remained troubled and anguished in spirit. Once the fever took hold and he grew visibly unwell, those close to him understood at once that his life's span had run its course. The principal men of the kingdom were summoned to his side. Every throat there choked with the weight of supreme grief. He drank the waters of the Bhagirathi (the sacred Ganga water kept for such a moment). On Saturday, the full moon of Chaitra Shuddha — Hanuman Jayanti — in Shake 1602, the Raudra Samvatsar, corresponding to 2 April 1680, at midday, Shivaji passed away at Raigad. His cremation took place within the precincts of the Jagadishwar temple. His wife Putalabai, of the Mohite family, followed him in death (sati). He left two sons — Sambhaji, born of Saibai, and Rajaram, born of Soyarabai — and four daughters: Sakhubai, married to Mahadji Nimbalkar; Ranubai, given in marriage to the Jadhavs; Ambikabai, married to Harji Raje Mahadik; and the fourth, Rajkuvarbai, married to Ganoji Raje Shirke.

शिवाजीचें अपुरें उरलेलें कार्य — हिंदुपदपातशाही

Shivaji's untimely death left his principal life's mission — the establishment of Hindu-pad-padshahi, a sovereign Hindu polity — incomplete. The Muslim conquest of India had begun around the year 1000 CE, and efforts to resist and reverse it had been made over the centuries by various heroic figures in their own ways, among them Prithviraj Chauhan and Rana Sangram Singh (Rana Sanga). Of all such efforts in recent times, Shivaji's was by far the most significant. Through the combined, farsighted, and resourceful labour of three generations of his family, he brought this larger goal to substantial fruition. In the Deccan, the work succeeded outright; what remained undone was the task in the north, and this too he would certainly have completed had his life been spared. All the necessary preparation had already been made. Shivaji understood the political situation in the north very well; his friendship with the Rajputs had by then matured, and they too were eager to join him in this larger effort. A short while before his death, Shivaji himself sent a public letter of protest to Aurangzeb, sharply condemning the reimposition of the jizya tax upon Hindus — a document that stands today as clear evidence of the breadth of his larger purpose. Aurangzeb had proclaimed this tax on 2 April 1679, and Shivaji's reply followed swiftly upon it. Later, Sambhaji too carried forward efforts to bring down Aurangzeb, and in his final hour he met death with great courage, laying down his life in a manner that, in the eyes of history, atoned for all his earlier faults. Beyond that, the still-unfinished work of establishing Hindu-pad-padshahi was carried to completion, by a different path, by Sambhaji's own son Shahu and by the Peshwas who served him — but that belongs to the history that follows. This deep-seated tension between Hindu and Muslim has, in one form or another, continued down to our own day across some nine hundred years; and of all who confronted it, Shivaji alone truly succeeded in withstanding it.