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Shahji Bhonsla, a captain of mercenaries, belonged to a Maratha family that had migrated from Daulatabad and entered the service of the Nizam-Shahi Sultans of Ahmadnagar. Some of his kinsmen had joined the Mughals with their retainers and risen to high rank early in Shah Jahan's reign. Shivaji, the second son of Shahji, was born in the hill-fort of Shivner, which towers over the city of Junnar, in the extreme north of the Puna district. His mother Jija Bai (a daughter of the aristocratic Lukhji Jadav of Sindkhed) had prayed to the local goddess, Shiva-Bai, for the good of her expected child, and named him after that deity.

Of the exact date of his birth and the incidents of his boyhood, there is no contemporary record. Even Krishnaji Anant Sabhasad, writing in 1694, is silent on these points. The earliest mention of them is found in works composed 150 years after his birth, when the Shivaji myth had been fully developed among the Marathas and baseless legends and deliberate fabrications had entirely overspread the few historic truths about him that were still preserved in