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1664]

The year 1664 that lay between the departure of Shaista Khan and the arrival of Jai Singh, was not marked by any Mughal success. The new viceroy, Prince Muazzam, lived at Aurangabad, caring only for pleasure and hunting. His favourite general, Maharajan Jaswant Singh, was posted at Puna. From this place he marched out and besieged Kondana. The Rajputs are proverbially inefficient in sieges, and Jaswant, after wasting some months before the fort, delivered a rash and fruitless assault, in which he lost many hundreds of his soldiers, chiefly owing to a gunpowder explosion. Then he quarrelled with his brother-in-law Bhao Singh Hada, evidently on the question of responsibility for the failure, and the two officers with their armies retired to Aurangabad (in June) to pass the rainy season. The campaign ended with absolutely no gain. (Dil. 47; A. N. 867; Z. C, siege from Dec. 1663 to June, '64.)

The field being clear, Shivaji ranged at liberty in spite of the height of the rainy season, and plundered Ahmadnagar. (Karwar to Surat, 8th, August, 1664. F. R. Surat, vol. 104.)

On 26th June the English factors write, "Shivaji is so famously infamous for his notorious thefts that Report hath made him an airy body, and added wings, or else it were impossible he could be at so many places as he is said to be at, all at one time... They ascribe to him to perform more than a Herculean labour that he is become the talk of all