Tara: A Mahratta Tale

by Meadows Taylor

They left their daughter, then, at peace; and her last connection with the temple, where her father served, and where she was long remembered, was the presentation to the shrine, of the necklace she had vowed to it, which was taken there in solemn procession, and hung round the neck of the image. Some time afterwards, and when all expiatory ceremonies were completed, Radha's first child was born—a son, which Anunda adopted as her own: and in her care for it, found love and occupation to fill her heart and her time, and to supply, in some part, Tara's absence.

Mother and daughter met, however, frequently. No entire year elapsed without a reunion, and in the course of time came children too, who climbed in turn about the good dame's lap and called her grandmother. Then her heart clave to them—strangers though they were in faith—and after her own simple fashion she lived much among them during the latter years of a tranquil and happy life. Sometimes the Shastree came with her to Beejapoor, but not often.

Fazil Khan lived in stormy times and bore his part in them. The destruction of the force under his father's command had not only been a sore loss to the King's army, both in matériel and in men,[21] but a vital blow at the very existence of the kingdom and of the Mussulman power in India. Treacherously as it had been gained, the Rajah Sivaji did not slumber on his victory. His people were assured it had been suggested by divine counsel, and carried out by divine aid, and that their prince thenceforth was an incarnation of divinity. He, perhaps aided by his mother, believed this of himself, propagated the belief, and acted upon the effect of it. He was everywhere active and persevering: now invading the kingdom of Beejapoor, plundering up to the gates of the capital, and inflicting rapid and terrible blows in all directions: now attacking the Moghul posts and forts, and extending his authority until, though professing subservience to both, he became virtually independent equally of Dehli and Beejapoor, and finally assumed the state and insignia of a sovereign.

Fazil Khan had not long concluded his marriage ceremonies, ere he was called upon to take the command of part of a new army, with which the King took the field in person. Tara would not leave him, and shared the fatigue and peril of the new campaign in a manner which called forth the lady Lurlee's warmest approbation. She had not been more, she said, to his father than Tara was to his son, and she always contrasted her practical usefulness and endurance, with the behaviour of other ladies who could not leave luxurious palaces, and the state and splendour which had greater charms for them, than the rough vicissitudes of camp life.

For a time the royal forces succeeded in checking the Mahratta incursions and restoring tranquillity on the borders, and Fazil Khan continued, like his father, to render service as a commander whenever he was called upon; but he could not be induced to take office in the administration, and as disquiet and intrigue at the capital became more formidable, retired for the most part to his estate of Afzoolpoor, near the Bheema river, and usually lived there, visiting Beejapoor only on occasions of ceremony. He never married again, as the law would have allowed, and at his death was buried beside his wife in the mausoleum which his father had built at Afzoolpoor, and where such of the remains of the old Khan as could be afterwards recovered, had been deposited. The mausoleum still exists as perfect as when built, and on the several anniversaries of their deaths, flowers are strewn by the Mussulman priests of the town and by the people over their graves, and prayers are said for the repose of their souls in Paradise.

We have said that the Mussulmans of India received their first material check in the massacre at Pertâbgurh, and we state this advisedly. That event, in 1657, led as directly to their ruin, and the steady rise of the Mahrattas, as did the English victory of Plassey, in 1757, to the destruction of both. For though, by the conquests and subversion of all the independent Mussulman kingdoms of the Dekhan by Aurungzeeb, the empire of Dehli culminated to its highest splendour,—it was not maintained: and rapidly fell to pieces under the effects of disastrous civil wars on the one hand, and the increasing power of the Mahrattas on the other. In 1689, Beejapoor was again attacked by the Moghul armies under the Emperor in person, and, surrendering by capitulation, ceased to be an independent kingdom. The rest is matter of general history, with which this particular chronicle has no concern.

Sivaji died in 1680, after a life which was a stirring romance from first to last, but not before the power he had aroused and created had become for the present invincible—fulfilling his mother's prophecy, that the Hindu war-cry, "Hur, Hur, Mahadeo!" should be shouted in victory throughout the land of Hind, in triumph to the goddess who led it on, from Dehli to Raméshwur.

It was singular that Kowas Khan, with his father's tragical fate fresh in his memory, should have been unable to resist the same temptations to treason and treachery. Though he had ceased them for a while, the Emperor Aurungzeeb renewed his intrigues at Beejapoor; for Kowas Khan, who became regent of the State after the King Ali Adil Shah's death, entered into negotiations with the Moghul general, Khan Jehán, who commanded in the adjoining provinces, to give a daughter of the royal house in marriage to a son of the Emperor's, and as the price of this, to hold the kingdom of Beejapoor himself in dependence, which had been his father's aim also. The plot was discovered, however, and Kowas Khan was assassinated, in 1675, eighteen years after the events we have recorded.

Some of his lineal descendants still survive, and the memory of the lady Zyna and of her beauty lives among them. There is a noble mausoleum on the west side of the town of Suggur, in the province of Shorapoor, which, at the period of which we write, belonged to this family. It was begun by the "Wuzeer" of Beejapoor, and finished by his son Kowas Khan: and in it the remains of the lady Zyna and her husband rest, under the care of their descendants, who, now reduced in circumstances, have preserved a small village with its lands, which adjoins the tomb, as the only remnant of the once princely estates which were held by their ancestors; and the revenues of this village, which had originally been assigned in payment of oil for the mausoleum, are now their only support. They are, however, most respectable. The soubriquet of Wuzeer is still attached to them; and the head of the family, Sofee Sahib, still preserves much of the "aristocratic" dignity of descent. The family palace at Beejapoor, though deserted, is still standing, and is, or was, one of the very few private buildings there of which the roof is entire. Perhaps by this time, however, its owner may have been unable to resist the price he could obtain for its massive teak timbers. The roof may have been sold, and the handsome rooms and courts left open, to decay rapidly under the influence of the seasons.