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 CHAPTER X

Sivají the Maráthá

Sivají was born in May, 1627, and was thus eight years younger than his great adversary Aurangzíb. He was brought up at his father's jágír of Poona, where he was noted for his courage and shrewdness, while 'for craft and trickery he was reckoned a sharp son of the Devil, the Father of Fraud.' He mixed with the wild highlanders of the neighbouring Gháts, and listening to their native ballads and tales of adventure, soon fell in love with their free and reckless mode of life. If he did not join them in their robber raids, at least he hunted through their country, and learnt every turn and path of the Gháts. He found that the hill forts were utterly neglected or miserably garrisoned by the Bíjápúr government, and he resolved upon seizing them, and inaugurating an era of brigandage on a heroic scale. He began by surprising the fort of Tórna, some twenty miles from Poona, and after adding fortress to fortress at the expense of the Bíjápúr kingdom, without attracting much notice, crowned his iniquity in 1648 by making a convoy of royal treasure 'bail up,' and by occupying