The rise of the Marathas can be traced to the Mughal attack on
Ahmednagar, a town 95 miles east of Pune, in 1595. In 1595, King Bahadur
Nizam II (a Mughal king 1595-1605) honored a Maratha, Maloji Bhonsle
with the title of raja and gave him the estates of Pune and the fort of
Chakan, near Pune. Maloji Bhosle was the grandfather of Shivaji Bhonsle,
the founder of the Maratha Empire. Shivaji Bhosle was born in 1627, in
the fort of Shivner, near Pune.
In 1629, Shivaji's father Shahaji, who had succeeded his father Maloji,
in Pune and Chakan, disengaged himself from the service of the Mughal
government. Consequently, in 1635 the Mughal army attacked Pune. Shahaji
surrendered; therefore his estates were returned to him. Soon, Shahaji
put Dadaji Kondadev in charge of Pune, while he left to capture the
South.
In Pune, Dadaji built a palace 'Lal Mahal', for Shivaji and his mother
Jijabai. At the age of sixteen (1643 A.D.), Shivaji took great delight
in stirring up his friends' hopes and nursed the thought of becoming
independent. By 1647, Shivaji had captured two forts and had the
complete charge of Pune. In 1657, he committed his first act of
hostility against the Mughals by plundering a large booty in Ahmednagar.
Thus, began a sequence of attacks on the Mughals. By 1680, the year of
Shivaji's death, nearly whole of the Deccan belonged to his kingdom.
Shivaji was succeeded by his son Sambhaji. He showed the same vigor as
his father, but was taken prisoner and executed by the Mughal ruler
Aurangzeb, in 1689. Rajaram, Sambhaji's younger brother then took the
throne, since Sambhaji's son, Shahu was still a minor. The death of
Rajaram in 1700 seemed to end the power of the Marathas, but Tarabai,
the elder widow of Rajaram, put her young son Shahu on the throne, at
the tender age of ten. |