Like Tanhauser, In Wagner's Opera,
The Unconquerable Sivaji Spent Seven Years Of His Youth In This
Mysterious Abode, And Therein Acquired His Extraordinary Strength
And Valour.
Sivaji is a kind of Indian Ilia Moorometz, though his epoch is
much nearer to our times.
He was the hero and the king of the
Mahrattas in the seventeenth century, and the founder of their
short-lived empire. It is to him that India owes the weakening,
if not the entire destruction, of the Mussulman yoke. No taller
than an ordinary woman, and with the hand of a child, he was,
nevertheless, possessed of wonderful strength, which, of course,
his compatriots ascribed to sorcery. His sword is still preserved
in a museum, and one cannot help wondering at its size and weight,
and at the hilt, through which only a ten-year-old child could put
his hand. The basis of this hero's fame is the fact that he, the
son of a poor officer in the service of a Mogul emperor, like
another David, slew the Mussulman Goliath, the formidable Afzul Khan.
It was not, however, with a sling that he killed him, he used in
this combat the formidable Mahratti weapon, vaghnakh, consisting
of five long steel nails, as sharp as needles, and very strong.
This weapon is worn on the fingers, and wrestlers use it to tear
each other's flesh like wild animals. The Deccan is full of legends
about Sivaji, and even the English historians mention him with
respect.
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