Page:Castes and tribes of southern India, Volume 5.djvu/24

MARATHA The last Marātha King of Tanjore, Mahārāja Sivāji, died in 1855. It is noted by Mr. M. J. Walhouse * that "an eye-witness has recorded the stately and solemn spectacle of his funeral, when, magnificently arranged, and loaded with the costliest jewels, his body, placed in an ivory palanquin, was borne by night through the torchlit streets of his royal city amid the wail of vast multitudes lamenting the last of their ruling race. The nearest descendant, a boy of twelve, was carried thrice round the pile, and at the last circuit a pot of water was dashed to pieces on the ground. The boy then lit the pile, and loud long-sustained lament of a nation filled the air as the flames rose." Upon the death of Sivāji, the Rāj became, under the decision of the Court of Directors, extinct. His private estate was placed under the charge of the Collector of the district. In addition to three wives whom he had already married, Sivāji, three years before his death, married in a body seventeen girls. In 1907, three of the Rānis were still living in the palace at Tanjore. It is recorded † by the Marchioness of Dufferin that, when the Viceroy visited the Tanjore palace in 1886 to speak with the Rānis, he was admitted behind the purdah. "The ladies had not expected him, and were not dressed out in their best, and no one could speak any intelligible language. However, a sort of chattering went on, and they made signs towards a chair, which, being covered with crimson cloth, Dufferin thought he was to sit down on. He turned and was just about to do so, when he thought he saw a slight movement, and he fancied there might be a little dog there, when two women pulled the cloth open, and there was the