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VII. At! Autohh graphical Memoir of the early Life ofNjKA FAitNEvis. 

 Translated frovi the original Mahratta, by Lieutenant-ColonelJoHN 

 Briggs, M.R.A.S., late Reside7it at the Court of Satara. 



Read April 19, 1828. 



This piece of biography may truly be considered one of the most remark- 

 able productions of oriental literature. 



Nana Farnevis became at a very early period the bosom friend of his 

 sovereign Madhu Rao, entitled the Great. This young prince succeeded 

 his father in the year I76I, shortly after the fatal battle of Paniput, which 

 seemed to threaten the downfall of the Mahratta power in Hindustan. He 

 was then only in his seventeenth year, and Nana but nineteen. The latter 

 had been hitherto brought up to the study of the Vedas and Sdstras, but 

 had as yet engaged little in the duties of a public office, which his father 

 had filled till Nana was fifteen, and which was now occupied by his uncle 

 Babu Rao. The office to which I have alluded was hereditary, and had 

 been held for three generations by Nana's family. It was that of Farnevis or 

 Fard-7ievis (literally, record-writer), but its duty was more especially to keep 

 the accounts of the Peshwa's public receipts and disbursements. A situation, 

 which brought those who filled it so constantly in contact with the Peshwa, 

 was favourable to the development of those qualities which the youthful 

 prince Madhu Rao discovered in his juvenile secretary. An attachment 

 grew up between them, terminating only in the Peshwa's death, an event 

 which occurred in I'J^A-, at the early age of twenty-eight. 



The part which Nana Farnevis took in the Poona government subsequent 

 to that period, rendered him the chief director of all its political movements 

 till the death of Madhu Rao the Second, which happened in 1797. From that 

 period he was engaged in contending with the late Peshwa Baji Rao for tliat 

 authority which he was unwilling to relinquish, but which he failed to attain. 

 In March 1 800 Nana Farnevis died, after having retired from public bu- 

 siness, leaving beiiind him tlie reputation of being one of the greatest men 

 of liis time and country. 



