CHAPTER VI.
Visit to Aurangzib, 1666.
§ 1 . Shivaji's fears and hopes from a journey to the Mughal Court.
Jai Singh had undertaken to send Shivaji to the imperial Court. But it was no easy task. In the Treaty of Purandar, Shivaji had expressly stipulated that he was not to be called upon to enter the Mughal military service (mansab), nor to attend the imperial Court. There were strong reasons for it. For one thing, he and his countrymen had no faith in Aurangzib's word and believed the Emperor to be capable of any act of treachery and cruelty. Then, again, the Maratha chief had an inborn repugnance to bending his head before a Muslim; he had been brought up in the freedom and solitude of hill and woodland, away from cities and Courts; he had imbibed the orthodox Hindu spirit from his mother and his tutor, from the comrades of his boyhood and the saints whom he adored; and he had risen to independent sovereignty without ever filling any subordinate post as the servant of a higher authority. He was therefore at first averse to visit the imperial Court.
But Jai Singh plied him with hopes of high reward and "used a thousand devices" (as he repeatedly wrote in his letters), to induce him to go
