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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(MAY, 1921
and ever engaged in a war of defence as well as of conquest, a scientific division of departments on modern lines. He had evidently copied from the existing system and found little leisure in his eventful career to improve upon it.
In their departmental duties each of eight Pradhans was The staff of the
Pradhang. assisted by a staff of eight clerks. They were :
1. The Dewan. 2. The Mazamdar or Auditor and Accountant.
The Fadnis or Deputy Auditor. 4. The Sabnis or the Daftardar. 5. The Karkhanis or Commissary. 6. The Chitnis or Correspondence clerk. 7. The Jamdar or Treasurer.
8. The Potnis or Cashkeeper.55 The king formed the great pivot on which rested this stupendous structure. His was
the hand that worked this gigantic, but by no means easy machine. The king the soul of Not only the officers in charge of the eighteen Karkhanas and the the system.
twelve Mahals, not only such secretariat officers as the Fadnis, Sabnis and Potnis, but also their official superiors, the eight Pradhans and the Chitnis, formed a vast array of clerks and military commanders, to carry out the orders of the king and to execute his great designs. They were but so many machines, not inanimate it is true, not uncon scious of the great part they were playing, but at the same time hardly having any independent existence. Even the Pandit Rav, the officer in charge of the ecclesiastical branch of the administration, whose Brahman birth and learning might have given him some advan tage over his non-Brahman master, could hardly take any step without the cognisance and sanction of the king. Even Kalush, the all powerful minister of Sambhaji, deemed it necessary to consult the king's pleasure before he could authorise the re-admission of a repentant renegade into his former caste after the necessary penance.56 Everything therefore depended on the personal ability and qualities of the sovereign. There was nothing to check him except his own good sense, and of course the constant fear of a formidable Muhammadan invasion. It was for this reason alone that Sambhaji found it so easy to subvert his father's system, the day after his accession to the throne. It is this very reason again that impelled Rajaram, while sorely pressed by the victorious Imperial army, to revive the old institutions his father had found so useful. The system required a strong and good ruler. After Shahu, there were none among Shivaji's descendants who possessed the requisite qualities; and that is why the Peshwas found it so easy to do away with the Central Government. The Ashta Pradhans still continued, but the hereditary incumbents found themselves in an anomalous situation. They enjoyed great fiefs but were never in practice called upon to perform their civil duties. The Peshwe, in theory their equal, became in reality their superior. The king their master was a state prisoner. The Peshwa's Fadnis, originally an officer of no importance, gradually rose to very great power; and the central governmont, no longer its former self, was transferred from Satara to Poona. But through all these
55 Grant Duff, Vol. 1, p. 191.
58 The Rajwade, M.I.S., Vol. III.
