record is incomplete and we cannot confidently deduce his political aim from his actual achievement. It would be more correct to conjecture it from indirect sources like his regulations, though this class of materials is scanty and often inconclusive.
In the vast Gangetic valley and the wide Desh country rolling eastwards through the Deccan, Nature has fixed no boundary to States. Their size changes with daily changes in their strength as compared with their neighbours'. There can be no stable equilibrium among them for more than a generation. Each has to push the others as much for self-defence as for aggression. Each must be armed and ready to invade the others, if it does not wish to be invaded and absorbed by them. Where friction with neighbours is the normal state of things, a huge armed force, sleepless vigilance, and readiness to strike the first blow are the necessary conditions of the very existence of a kingdom. The evil could be remedied only by the establishment of a universal empire throughout the country from sea to sea.
Shivaji could not for a moment be sure of the pacific disposition or fidelity to treaty of the Delhi Government. The past history of the Mughal expansion into the Deccan since the days of Akbar, was a warning to him. The imperial policy of annexing the whole of South India was unmistakable to Shiva as to Adil Shah or Qutb Shah. Its completion was only a question of time, and every Deccani
