Page:Shivaji and His Times.djvu/370

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350
SHIVAJI.
[CH. XII.


was so vast as to stagger the imagination of the Maratha chroniclers, and they made no attempt to compute its value.

Over the Karnatak plains thus conquered, he at first placed Shantaji, a natural son of Shahji, as viceroy with Jinji for his headquarters, assisted by Raghunath Narayan Hanumante as diplomatist and local adviser, and Hambir Rao as commander of the army of occupation. The tableland of Mysore was placed under Rango Narayan as viceroy, but subject to the higher jurisdiction of Jinji.

§15. Struggle with Vyankoji renewed.

But the new conquest was not to enjoy peace in the absence of his master mind. Vyankoji, on returning to Tanjore, set on foot intrigues with the Nayaks of Madura and Mysore "and other woodmen" (as the English called the poligars), and even appealed to the Court of Bijapur and the Muslim nobles in his neighbourhood, to organise "a confederacy for regaining their own." The Nayak of Madura, however, remained neutral, and no help seems to have come from Mysore or Bijapur. About 25th November, Vyankoji, at the head of 4,000 cavalry and 10,000 infantry of his own and of the allied poligars, crossed the Kolerun, and attacked Shantaji, who boldly resisted with his 12,000 men from morning to nightfall.


further victorious designs." (H. Gary to Co., dated Bombay, 16 Jan., 1678. O. C. 4314.) "Peeled to the bones" in Madras records of Oct. 1677.