Tara: A Mahratta Tale

by Meadows Taylor

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."