it. As he boasted to Vyankoji's envoys, "My father left me a jagir of only four lakhs of hurt [or 40,000 hun, according to Sabh. 102] a year, and now I own a territory yielding from 50 to 60 lakhs, besides
realising 80 lafyhs annually as blackmail." (T. S. 35a.) But he was instigated by the discontented ex-wazir of Vyankoji to invade the kingdom.*[1]
Raghunath Narayan Hanumante had ably managed Shahji's jagirs in the Karnatak and had been left by his dying master as prime-minister of Vyankoji. Conscious of his own ability and long experience in administration, the minister wished to keep all the powers of the State in his own hands, and slighted his master as an incompetent sluggard, — while Vyankoji, irritated by Raghunath's over- bearing conduct and his own reduction to impotence in the government of his own realm, listened readily to the minister's jealous rivals against his counsels. Raghunath, also, envied the great wealth and glory which other Maratha Brahmans enjoyed in consequence of their being the ministers of an enterprising
- ↑ * It is incredible that a born strategist like Shivaji could have really intended to annex permanently a territory on the Madras coast, which was separated from his own dominions by two powerful and potentially hostile States like Bijapur and Golkonda, and more than 700 miles distant from his capital. His aim, I believe, was merely to squeeze the country of its accumulated wealth and return home with the booty. The partition of his father's heritage was only a plea adopted to give a show of legality to this campaign of plunder.
