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Rh features of the permanently occupied portion of his swaraj, as we have shown elsewhere.

Why did Shivaji fail to create an enduring State? Why did the Maratha nation stop short of the final accomplishment of their union and dissolve before they had consolidated into an absolutely compact political body?

An obvious cause was, no doubt, the shortness of his reign, barely ten years after the final rupture with the Mughals in 1670. But this does not furnish the true explanation of his failure. It is doubtful if with a very much longer time at his disposal he could have averted the ruin which befell the Maratha State under the Peshwas, for the same moral canker was at work among his people in the 17th century as in the 18th. The first danger of the new Hindu kingdom established by him in the ' Deccan lay in the fact that the national glory and prosperity resulting from the victories of Shivaji and Baji Rao I. created a reaction in favour of Hindu orthodoxy; - it accentuated caste distinction and ceremonial purity of daily rites which ran counter to the homogeneity and simplicity of the poor and politically depressed early Maratha society. Thus, his political success sapped the main foundation of that success. In the security, power and wealth engendered by their independence, the Marathas of the 18th