[156]
CHAPTER XI.
The Maráthás, 1650-1818.
Rise of the Maráthás.—About the year 1634, a Maráthá soldier of fortune, Sháhjí Bhonsla by name, began to play a conspicuous part in Southern India. He fought on the side of the two independent Muhammadan States, Ahmadnagar and Bijápur, against the Mughals; and left a band of followers, together with a military fief, to his son Sivají, born in 1627. Sivají formed a national party out of the Hindu tribes of the Deccan—a native Hindu party which was opposed alike to the imperial armies from the north, and to the independent Muhammadan kingdoms of the south. There were thus, from 1650 onwards, three powers in the Deccan,—first, the ever-invading troops of the Delhi Empire; second, the forces of the two remaining independent Muhammadan States of Southern India, namely, Ahmadnagar and Bijápur; third, the military organization of the local Hindu tribes, which ultimately grew into the Maráthá Confederacy.
Their Growth as a 'Third Party' in the Deccan.—During the eighty years' war of Sháh Jahán and Aurangzeb, with a view to the conquest of the independent Muhammadan kingdoms in Southern India (1627-1707), this third or Hindu party fought sometimes for the Delhi emperors, sometimes for the independent Muhammadan kingdoms, and obtained a constantly increasing importance. The Mughal armies from the north, and the independent Muhammadan kingdoms of the south, gradually exterminated each other. Being foreigners, they had to recruit their exhausted forces from outside. The Hindu or Maráthá Confederacy drew its inexhaustible native levies from the wide tract known as Maharashtra, stretching from the Berars in Central India to near the south of the Bombay Presidency. The Maráthás were therefore courted alike by the
