Shivaji and his times.
By Jadunath Sarkar - Indian Educational Service (Bihar)
Published by Longmans, Green & Co., London - 1920.
"A new and critical study of Shivaji's life and character has long been due, as the last scholarly work on the subject was composed, by Captain James Grant Duff, a century ago, and a vast mass of original material unknown to him has become accessible to the student since then. To put the case briefly, the present work differs from his eminently readable and still valuable History of the Mahrattas, (3 Vols., 1826), in the rigid preference of contemporary records to later compilations, and the exhaustive and minute use of the available sources,both printed and MS.—in Persian, English, Marathi and Hindi, as well as the Dutch Records in the India Office, London.
The present work marks an advance on Grant Duff's History in three points in particular :
First, among Persian materials his only authorities were Khafi Khan, who wrote 108 years after the birth of Shivaji and is admittedly unreliable where he does not borrow faithfully from earlier writers, and Bhimsen, an incorrect and brief translation of whose Journal (by Jonathan Scott, 1794) alone was then available. I have, on the other hand, relied on the absolutely of Shah Jahan and Aurangzib, Muhammad and Ali Adil Shah, many historical letters in Persian, the entire letter-books of Jai Singh and Aurangzib, daily bulletins of Aurangzib's Court, and the full text of Bhimsen as well as another contemporary Hindu historian in Persian, viz., Ishwardas Nagar, — all of which were unknown to Grant Duff.
Secondly, he relied too much on the uncritical and often deliberately false Chitnis Bakhar, written 183 years after Shivaji's birth, while I have preferred the work of Shivaji's courtier, Sabhasad, and also incorporated whatever is valuable and above suspicion in the mass of Marathi materials published by a band of devoted Indian workers at Puna and Satara during the last 40 years. Grant Duff, moreover,worked on single manuscripts of the Marathi chronicles ; but we live in a happier age when these sources have been carefully edited with variations of reading and notes.
Thirdly, the English and Dutch Factory Records have been more minutely searched by me and every useful information has been extracted from them."