110 Lieul.-Colonel Brigg^ Translation of the 



of those members who liave suggested this mode of introducing the curious 

 correspondence of which I am in possession to this institution, and to the 

 literary world. 



I assume, that most of the members present have read the very excellent 

 history of the Mahrattas, which has recently been published by Captain Grant 

 Duff, late Resident at the court of Satara ; and I shall therefore not enlarge 

 on the nature of the relations which subsisted between the Peshwa and the 

 Raja of all the Mahrattas ; but shall give a very succinct account of the 

 political situation of those states when Madhu Rao the Great ascended 

 the throne of the Peshwas. 



The Muhammedan hosts, settled in Transoxiana and Persia, first ap- 

 proached the Nilab (the upper part of the Indus) in the tenth century. 

 They gradually spread themselves over Northern India, and establish- 

 ed in Dehli a kingdom independent of the monarchy which had sent 

 forth their lieutenants to conquest. Three centuries elapsed ere the Mu- 

 hammedan arms penetrated to the south of the Nerbada ; after which 

 the lieutenants of the Dehli empire, in common with those of other parts, 

 became independent ; and at the period of the invasion of India in 1526 

 by Baber (the first of the race we designate by the title of the Great Mogul), 

 all India north of the Crishna river had been for the most part subjugated 

 by the Moslem troops, and no fewer than thirteen independent Muham- 

 medan sovereigns reigned over a population of fifty millions of Hindus. 

 Time had been allowed for these dynasties to sink into the luxury and 

 unbecility which usually belong to despotism in the third or fourth genera- 

 tion ; and the energy of the Mogul emperors, each of whom felt himself 

 bound to accomplish the subjugation of all the Muhammedan princes whose 

 ancestors had once been the lieutenants of the state, enabled them gradually 

 to subvert their power, and to re-unite the dismembered provinces of the em- 

 pire in the time of Aurungzeb, the last efficient monarch of the Mogul race. 



Availing himself of the circumstances of the times, Shahji, a Hindu 

 officer of the Muhammedan kingdom of Byapore, set the example of 

 making conquests in the name of his master, but virtually retaining the 

 power he obtained over the subjugated country in his own hands. The 

 same line of conduct was more effectually adopted by his enterprizing son, 

 SivAji, who established an independent sovereignty in Maharashtra, the 

 country which we now call the Deccan. Shao, the grandson of Sivaji, giving 

 way to the voluptuous habits which he had acquired in the court of Au- 



