Page:Shivaji and His Times.djvu/72

52 MS. of the Mahabaleshwar Bakhar has not been shown to the public even in Maharashtra, nor examined by experts with a view to judging its date and authenticity. A critic, evidently in the confidence of the Rao Bahadur, now writes that the MS. contains a statement that it was written by order of Rajah Shahu. We do not know the authority for this entry, nor whether the colophon was contemporaneous with the body of the MS. or is a modern addition.

Now, Shahu overcame his domestic rivals, curbed his Muslim enemies and became firmly seated on his throne after 1725, and he could have had time to think of rectifying his grandfather's reputation only towards the peaceful close of his reign (which ended in 1749.) This bakhar, if written by Shahu's order at all, was written about 1740 or even later, — i.e., more than 80 years after the murder of the Mores. What were its nameless author's means of knowing the truth better than Shivaji's own courtier? Could any written record about the Javli affair, contemporaneous with the event, have survived till 1740 and then disappeared, while the bakhar alleged to have been composed in that year and at the same place has survived? The Mahabaleshwar Bakhar, therefore, even if written in Shahu's time, had no other basis than unreliable oral tradition or deliberate invention. To accept such a work against Sabhasad and Chitnis is to defy the most elementary laws of historic evidence. And even then, the Mahabaleshwar Bakhar