Shri-Shiva-Digvijaya (IAST: Śrī-Śiva-Digvijaya) is a Marathi language biography of Shivaji, the founder of the Maratha Empire. The title of the text is also transliterated as Shiva-digvijay and Shiv-digvijay because of schwa deletion.

Shiva Digvijaya
AuthorAnonymous; attributed to Khando Ballal Chitnis by 19th-century editors
Original titleShri-Shiva-Digvijaya
LanguageMarathi
SubjectBiography of Shivaji
GenreBakhar
Publication placeIndia

The text is an anonymous work,[1] but L. K. Dandekar and P. R. Nandurbarkar - who edited it in 1895 - attributed its authorship to Khando Ballal (1718), the son of Shivaji's secretary Balaji Avji.[2] Historians such as Jadunath Sarkar and Surendra Nath Sen reject this attribution, and consider the text to be a modern forgery.[3] Astronomer S. B. Dixit dated the text to 1818 - a century later than the year that Dandekar and Nandurbarkar date it to.[4]

Sarkar theorizes that the text was forged by a writer of Kayastha Prabhu caste to glorify the Kayasthas as Shivaji's greatest and most loyal supporters.[5] According to him, the text published by Dandekar and Nandurbarkar is a modern work, although its core portion may have been a lost work composed during 1760-1775.[6]

References

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  1. ^ Prachi Deshpande (2007). Creative Pasts: Historical Memory and Identity in Western India, 1700-1960. Columbia University Press. p. 223. ISBN 978-0-231-12486-7.
  2. ^ Surendra Nath Sen (1976). Administrative System of the Marathas. K. P. Bagchi. pp. 2–3.
  3. ^ Jagadish Narayan Sarkar (1977). History of History Writing in Medieval India. Ratna Prakashan. p. 7.
  4. ^ B. K. Ahluwalia; Shashi Ahluwalia (1984). Shivaji and Indian Nationalism. Cultural Publishing House. p. 72.
  5. ^ Hari Ram Gupta, ed. (1957). Sir Jadunath Sarkar Commemoration Volumes: Life or letters of Sir Jadunath Sarkar. Department of History, Panjab University. p. 258.
  6. ^ Dipesh Chakrabarty (2015). The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and His Empire of Truth. University of Chicago Press. p. 158. ISBN 978-0-226-24024-4.