chroniclers, as is clearly borne in upon us when we study the records in the three languages in the original.
In this state of things it may be patriotic to prefer the Marathi accounts (always long posterior to the events and very often full of legends and garbled or entirely false traditions) to the accurate and contemporary Persian and English sources; but it would not be honest history.
In the late 18th and, if my surmise be correct, the early 19th century also, many Marathi works on Shivaji's times were composed. These are the bakhars flaunted by uncritical nationalists in the face of an ignorant public. But what is their value, their source, their literary character? Their utter lack of dates, their confusion in the order of events (known correctly from non-Marathi sources), their abundance of supernatural episodes, in short, their gossipy character and poor literary merit, at once mark them out for worthless collections of modern traditions. They are not history in any sense of the term.
Even the Sabhasad Bakhar, though written by a contemporary of Shivaji, is not based on State-papers and written notes, because it was composed while Raja Ram was closely besieged in Jinji fort, to which he had escaped from Maharashtra by the skin of his teeth, leaving everything behind, and after roving hither and thither in constant risk of capture. Such a master and his servants, running with their
