his own sin of omission in not having observed the Kshatriya rites so long, and was invested by Gaga Bhatta with the sacred thread, the distinctive badge of the twice-born castes like the "pure" Kshatriyas of Northern India. The next step was to teach him the mantra (sacred verses) and initiate him into the rules of the Kshatriya caste. Shivaji very logically demanded that all the Vedic verses appropriate to the initiation and coronation of a true Hindu king should be chanted in his hearing, because the Kshatriyas being one of the holy "twice-born" castes, he as an admitted Kshatriya was entitled to use the Vedic mantras equally with the Brahmans. At this there was a mutiny among the assembled Brahmans, who asserted that there was no true Kshatriya in the modern age*[1] and that the Brahmans were the only twice-born caste now surviving ! Even Gaga Bhatta was cowed by the general opposition and evidently
- ↑ * Exactly the same kind of trouble has been given by the Brahmans of the present generation to Shivaji's descendant, the Maharajah of Kolhapur. M.M. Haraprasad Shastri suggests that the greedy Brahmans probably saved their conscience by reciting some of the Vedic hymns at Shivaji's coronation, but mumbling them in such a way that not a syllable reached the ears of Shivaji ! The following significant passage in T. S. (39a) suggests that Shivaji at one time thought of punishing the ultra-orthodox Brahmans by removing them from lucrative secular duties like the command of armies and viceroyalties of provinces and confining them to their scriptural functions of fasting and praying. "The Maharajah learning [of the refusal of the Brahmans to teach him the Vedic mantras], said, 'The
