Melgiri Pandit

Melgiri Pandit
Melgiri Pandit
मेलेगिरी पण्डित
Born	est. 1650; Melgiri, Satara (Solapur District)
Died	1686; Bijapur (Bijapur District)
Cause of death	Killed at the Siege of Bijapur[citation needed]

Melgiri Pandit was a Pradhan, or minister, of Sambhaji Bhosale, a Maratha king in western India.^[2]^[3]

Little is known about Melgiri Pandit's life. A Deshastha Brahmin, he hailed from the township of Melgiri near the present-day Maharashtra-Karnataka border. He was Sambhaji's Panditrao, or the chief adjudicator of internal religious disputes in the kingdom.^{[citation needed]} He was responsible for formalizing diplomatic and trade relations between the chiefdom and the East India Company in 1684.^[4]

Melgiri Pandit and some Maratha forces assisted Sikandar Adil Shah against the Mughals in the Siege of Bijapur, which ended in a Mughal victory. Melgiri Pandit's forces ran interference on food, gunpowder, and weapon supply lines from the neighboring Mughal garrison at Solapur, then assisted Sultan Shah's forces in pushing the Mughal forces under Generals Ruhulla Khan and Qasim Khan back to their base camp at Ahmednagar.^[5] However, Melgiri was killed during the siege in 1686.^{[citation needed]}

Notes

^ Roberts, John. "The Movement of Elites in Western India under Early British Rule." Historical Journal (1971): 241-262.
^ Avari 2013, pp. 105–106: Quote: "Sambhaji (1657–89), lacking his father's military skills and political chicanery, could not keep his people united. Moving his entire court to the Deccan in 1682, Aurangzeb therefore decided to crush the Marathas once for all. By 1689, Sambhaji had been defeated and executed, but his death provoked his people into offering even greater resistance to Aurangzeb."
^ Eaton 2005, p. 179: Quote:"The emperor first concentrated on Bijapur and Golkonda, which he conquered and annexed in 1686 and 1687 respectively. Then he turned to the Marathas, whose principal hill-forts he sought to reduce, one by one. ... (which) served as power-bases for ambitious chieftains seeking to intercept that trade. ... The most successful of these rajas was doubtless Shivaji, who upon intercepting Bijapur's trade with the coast established a new kingdom based on hill-forts that he either appropriated from Bijapur or built anew. When his first son Sambhaji succeeded to the Maratha throne in 1680, Shivaji's principal fort of Raigarh remained the kingdom's capital. There, too, resided Sambhaji's younger half-brother Rajaram and the latter's several wives, including Tarabai. But with the fall of the last Deccan sultanate in 1687, the Marathas had to face the full brunt of Mughal power. In that year Tarabai's father, Hambir Rao, died in a battle with one of the emperor's generals. Then in February 1689 Sambhaji himself was captured, taken to Aurangzeb's camp, and brutally executed.
^ Riddick, John F. The history of British India: a chronology. Praeger Publishers, 2006.
^ Roy, Kaushik. War, Culture and Society in Early Modern South Asia, 1740-1849. Routledge, 2011.

References

Avari, Burjor (2013), Islamic Civilization in South Asia: A History of Muslim Power and Presence in the Indian Subcontinent, Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-58061-8, retrieved 14 October 2013
Eaton, Richard M. (2005), A Social History of the Deccan, 1300-1761: Eight Indian Lives, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-25484-7, retrieved 15 October 2013

[Roberts-1] Roberts, John. "The Movement of Elites in Western India under Early British Rule." Historical Journal (1971): 241-262.

[FOOTNOTEAvari2013105–106-2] Avari 2013, pp. 105–106: Quote: "Sambhaji (1657–89), lacking his father's military skills and political chicanery, could not keep his people united. Moving his entire court to the Deccan in 1682, Aurangzeb therefore decided to crush the Marathas once for all. By 1689, Sambhaji had been defeated and executed, but his death provoked his people into offering even greater resistance to Aurangzeb."

[FOOTNOTEEaton2005179-3] Eaton 2005, p. 179: Quote:"The emperor first concentrated on Bijapur and Golkonda, which he conquered and annexed in 1686 and 1687 respectively. Then he turned to the Marathas, whose principal hill-forts he sought to reduce, one by one. ... (which) served as power-bases for ambitious chieftains seeking to intercept that trade. ... The most successful of these rajas was doubtless Shivaji, who upon intercepting Bijapur's trade with the coast established a new kingdom based on hill-forts that he either appropriated from Bijapur or built anew. When his first son Sambhaji succeeded to the Maratha throne in 1680, Shivaji's principal fort of Raigarh remained the kingdom's capital. There, too, resided Sambhaji's younger half-brother Rajaram and the latter's several wives, including Tarabai. But with the fall of the last Deccan sultanate in 1687, the Marathas had to face the full brunt of Mughal power. In that year Tarabai's father, Hambir Rao, died in a battle with one of the emperor's generals. Then in February 1689 Sambhaji himself was captured, taken to Aurangzeb's camp, and brutally executed.

[Riddick-4] Riddick, John F. The history of British India: a chronology. Praeger Publishers, 2006.

[5] Roy, Kaushik. War, Culture and Society in Early Modern South Asia, 1740-1849. Routledge, 2011.

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

See also

Notes

References