Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/195

Rh of India. The King of Bijapur was responsible for educating this hardy race for their career of rapine. They formed a large proportion of his subjects, and their dialect, an offshoot of Sanskrit, became the official language of the revenue department of his kingdom. Gradually they came to be employed in his army, first in garrison duty, and then in the light cavalry, a branch of service for which they displayed extraordinary aptitude. Some of them rose to offices of importance at Bijapur and Golkonda. One of these officers, Shahji Bhonsla, a rebel against Shah Jahan in the Konkan in 1634, and afterwards governor of Poona and Bangalore, was the father of Sivaji, the founder of the Maratha power.

Sivaji was eight years younger than his great adversary Aurangzib. He was brought up at Poona, where he was noted for his courage and shrewdness. He mixed with the wild highlanders of the neighbouring Ghats, and, listening to their native ballads and tales of adventure, soon fell in love with their free and reckless mode of life, and learned every turn and path of the Konkan. He found that the hill forts were miserably garrisoned by the Bijapur Government, and he resolved upon seizing them and inaugurating an era of brigandage on an heroic scale. He began by surprising the castle of Torna, some twenty miles from Poona, and after adding fortress to fortress at the expense of the Bijapur kingdom without attracting much notice, crowned his iniquity in 1648 by making a convoy of royal treasure, and by occupying the whole of the