THE STORY OF ICHALKARANJI
position made it very difficult for him to find any additional means of making money. His good wife Gangabai, like all Brahmin women, tried her best to keep the household happy and contented with the small income of her husband, although the few records that are available go to show that it was often a very difficult task even to keep up that respectability which their caste demanded. Although, like so many other important facts in Mahratta history, the actual date of birth of the founder of Ichalkaranji State is shrouded with uncertainty, the evidence available seems to show that it was some time about 1663 that Gangabai gave birth to her only son Naro Pant. The birth of a son is always a memorable event in the family chronicles of Hindus. and so despite their poverty both husband and wife undoubtedly realised that they had been well blessed by the Gods, although neither of them could have realised or even imagined that their only son would carve a name for himself in Mahratta history and be the founder of an important and flourishing State. And when five years later Mahadji Pant breathed his last, the widowed Gangabai found herself faced with a mighty problem,—a problem, moreover, which few Brahmin widows would have faced with such determination and courage as she did. But she apparently was convinced that her son had a definite mission in life, although here again it is not to be imagined that her ambitious eye saw so far into
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