Powada & Lavni

Side by side with Bhakti movement of the traditional narrative poets dedicated to ‘spiritual democracy’, the Shāhīrs or the composers of historical ballads (Powāḍās) and lyrics of love (Lāvņīs) inspired the people with national spirit, as well as romantic love, the natural instinct in human life. […] The Powāḍās or ballads are much older than the Lāvņīs.

“Apart from their (ballads) value as a national poetry,” says H. A. Acworth. “their phraseology is well worthy of study as an example of the flexibility, the force, the richness, and capacity of the vernacular language of the Marāthā ryot.”

If the Powāḍā is masculine in its robust vigour, the Lāvņī is feminine in its tone and tenor. […] Although some of the Lāvņīs are pornographic, a great majority of them are undoubtedly poetic. Honājī’s Ghanashyām Sundarā Shridharā (an invocation to Lord Krishna at dawn) is a case in point.

~ from “Language and Literature in the Eighteenth Century – Marathi”, by R.V. Herwadkar; in “The History and Culture of the Indian People – Volume Eight, The Maratha Supremacy”, Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan, Mumbai.

Writing History

“You must never write history,” he said, “until you can hear the people speak.” He thought about that for years, and it came to feel like a valuable guiding principle for fiction as well. If you didn’t have a sense of how people spoke, you didn’t know them well enough, and so you couldn’t—you shouldn’t—tell their story.

~ Salman Rushdie, quoting Arthur Hibbert, in The Disappeared

About The Marathas

The Mahrattas, and probably all natives of India, are in a peculiar manner, roused from indolence and apathy when charged in any degree with responsibility, either in what regards their own conduct, or that of another person.

~ James Grant Duff, Esq. (Captain in the first or Grenadier, Regiment of BombayNative Infantry and Late Political Resident at Satara), A History of the Mahrattas, In Three Volumes, Volume 1, Chapter VII, Page 228

UPDATE: Palkhed Campaign

My post on the Palkhed campaign recently received a lot of comments and I was told that the location of Palkhed in my map was incorrect. It was, indeed. Thank you to all the people who commented. I have now added a new map – as well as an animated map, to describe the movement of the Maratha and Nizam forces.

I’ve also added glossary items for Chauth and Sardeshmukhi.

Blog Update: 13MAY

I discovered today that the Wikipedia article on the Battle of Palkhed has a significant part of my post on the same subject. I tried looking for the person who has done this, and discovered that I only have an IP address for that version.

I have now written to the Wikipedia admins to see what needs to be done. I don’t mind the use of my content on Wikipedia – only that now it may seem that I copied the article from there!

I speaking with a friend about this issue, I got the idea of assigning a proper license to my content. I have now applied a Creative Commons to this entire blog.

This blog is now licensed as CC-BY-NC-ND. For more details choose the COPYRIGHT link on the sidebar.

Blog Update: 30DEC

I had changed the theme of this blog, a while ago, to help categorise the content in the blog. Earlier, I was managing this through a complicated linking of pages and posts, which was one of the reasons I wasn’t updating very frequently. I was getting lost in managing the links and the currency of content.

All content in the blog is now formatted as posts, rather than pages. I have recently deleted all categories and created a new hierarchy, which you can see on the header, and appears as a drop-down menu.

I have also added an about page that was missing for a while.

I hope this is a better experience for you, than before. I further hope that I’ll update this blog more often.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please leave a comment below.

About a Sher

A family wedding pulled me away in the fine month of December, last year, to Kolhapur, a city steeped in history. The bastion of Maratha history, it is a photographer’s delight, full of colour and fine imagery.

When you need to look for bits out of history, they are available to you everywhere.

One such bit that caught my attention was a standard measure, called a Sher (शेर) that was being cleaned and polished for a wedding ritual. When the bride enters the groom’s residence for the first time, she strikes inward, a Sher full of grain (usually Rice) at the threshold with her right foot (thumb, if you care for the finer details). This ritual is called “Maap Olandne” (माप अोलांडणे), loosely translated, “Crossing the Threshold (Measure?)”. It signifies the ushering of wealth and food (धन, धान्य) by virtue of her entry. I believe, this is a common tradition that is followed in most Hindu weddings.

My focus however, is the Sher.

This particular Sher was made in the year 1910 and has the rhomboidal inscription of म श्री छ प on it (M, Shri, Chh, P). This stands for महाराज श्रीमंत छत्रपाती परवाना (Maharaj Shrimant Chhatrapati Parwana). If I am not mistaken, the Parwana means “issue”. (Will update after confirmation)

So how much exactly is a Sher?

1 Sher = 1.25kgs, so
4 Sher = 5kgs, which is also known as a Payli (पायली)

Other related Sher terminology:

1/2 a Sher = 1 Mapta (मापटं)
1/4 a Sher – 1 Chipta (चिपटं)
and
1/2 a Chipta = 1 Kolwa (कोळवं)