Thanjavur Marathas and the Maratha legacy

Detail

How the Marathas reached Thanjavur

• Ekoji (also written Venkoji), Shivaji's half-brother, conquered Thanjavur in the late 17th century. Thanjavur is in present-day Tamil Nadu.
• So the Bhonsle family ruled in two far-apart places at once: the Deccan heartland under Shivaji, and the deep south under Ekoji's line.
• Thanjavur had already passed through several dynasties before them — Chola, then Vijayanagar, then Nayak, then Maratha, then British. Each layer added to the town's culture. [2][4]
• The Thanjavur Maratha line lasted far longer than the Peshwa state. It kept going as a princely house even after 1818, when the British ended Maratha power in the north.

A syncretic, multilingual court

• Syncretic means many traditions mixing freely instead of staying separate. At Thanjavur three languages lived side by side:
• Tamil — the language of the local people.
• Telugu — the language of the earlier Nayak rulers.

• Marathi — the language the new rulers brought from the Deccan.

• The court did not force one language on the rest. All three were used for writing, singing and theatre.

• Many rulers were themselves poets and dramatists. They did not only pay writers; they wrote.
• The mixing shows in the surviving manuscripts: the Thanjavur palace collection holds palm-leaf manuscripts in Tamil, Telugu and Marathi together in one library. [2]

Thanjavur painting

• The Thanjavur painting style flourished under Maratha patronage. Its mark is gold foil — thin beaten gold stuck onto the panel so the figure shines.
• The painters also set lace and semi-precious stones into the surface to decorate it. [4]
• Subjects are mostly gods and saints, shown close-up, with rich colour and a raised, jewelled look.
• Portraits of the Maratha rulers painted at the Thanjavur palace survive and are held in public collections today. [3]

Serfoji II — the most notable Thanjavur ruler

• Devendra Kuravanji — a Marathi play he wrote describing world geography as it was then known. A kuravanji is a south Indian dance-drama form; he poured geography into it.
• He knew many Indian and European languages. That is why he could read European science and put it into a Marathi play.
• Music and dance:
• Under his patronage modern Carnatic music took shape.

• So did the early stages of Bharatanatyam, the classical dance of Tamil Nadu.

• Dhanwantari Mahal — a centre of medicine named after Dhanwantari, the god of healing.

• It gave free treatment.
• It used both Indian and Western medicine — not one instead of the other.

• The palace collection still holds medical records of this type, including ophthalmological (eye) case sheets from 1860 and human physiognomy charts. [2]

• Printing press — the first press in India set up by a native Indian ruler. Other presses existed, run by missionaries and by the Company; the point is that an Indian king set one up himself.

• Brihadishwara temple inscription — the Bhonsle family history cut into the walls of the great Chola temple at Thanjavur. It is one of the largest single inscriptions in India.
• Note the choice: a Maratha king wrote his family's story onto a Chola-built Tamil temple. That is the syncretic idea in stone.

The Saraswati Mahal Library

• The palace library at Thanjavur is one of the oldest libraries in Asia. [2]
• It began under the Nayak ruler Raghunatha Nayak as the "Saraswati Bhandar", and Serfoji II greatly expanded it. [2]
• Today it is named Thanjavur Maharaja Serfoji's Sarasvati Mahal Library and Research Centre, and is a grantee body of the Union Ministry of Culture — that is, a body the central government funds. [2]
• Holdings include manuscripts, maps, paintings, rare printed books, flora and fauna paintings, and even recipe books of the Maratha court of Thanjavur. [2]
• Descriptive catalogues of its Tamil and Sanskrit manuscripts have been published and are available through the government's Indian Culture portal. [3]

The Maratha legacy (chapter's summing-up)

• Largest Indian empire before the British.
• At its height the Maratha confederacy controlled much of central and northern India.

• No later Indian power matched that reach until the British.

• An efficient new administration — a fresh system of revenue and governance, not a copy of the Mughal one.

• Revival of local Hindu traditions without religious discrimination — temples and local customs were restored, but other faiths were not targeted.
• A navy that resisted European supremacy — the Maratha fleet fought European ships even though it did not have the latest technology.
• Swarajya — "self-rule", rule by our own people.
• This was the founding ideal of Shivaji's state.
• The chapter argues it later inspired Indians to believe they could govern themselves, and calls this the early seeds of the freedom movement.
• (This last link is the NCERT chapter's claim about long-term influence, not a dated event.)

Prelims Hooks

• Ekoji (Venkoji), half-brother of Shivaji, conquered Thanjavur in the late 17th century.
• Three languages mixed at the Thanjavur court: Tamil (local), Telugu (earlier Nayak rulers), Marathi (new rulers).
• Thanjavur painting is identified by gold foil, plus lace and semi-precious stones. [4]
• Devendra Kuravanji — Serfoji II's Marathi play on world geography.
• Dhanwantari Mahal — free treatment using both Indian and Western medicine.
• Serfoji II set up the first printing press in India established by a native ruler.
• The Bhonsle family history is inscribed on the Brihadishwara temple walls — one of the largest single inscriptions in India.
• The Saraswati Mahal Library began as the Saraswati Bhandar under Raghunatha Nayak and was expanded by Serfoji II; it is among the oldest libraries in Asia and is a Ministry of Culture grantee body. [2]
• Under Serfoji II's patronage modern Carnatic music took shape and Bharatanatyam entered its early stage.
• Thanjavur's culture was built up in turn by Cholas → Nayaks → Marathas. [2][4]

Mains Points

• Regional courts as culture-makers, not just power-holders. Thanjavur shows that after Mughal decline, successor states became centres of new cultural production. Carnatic music's modern form, early Bharatanatyam and the gold-foil Thanjavur painting all crystallised under a Maratha court far from Maharashtra — useful against the view that the 18th century was only decline and disorder.
• Syncretism as a governing method. A Marathi-speaking dynasty ruled a Tamil land whose earlier rulers spoke Telugu, and let all three languages work together; a Maratha king inscribed his lineage on a Chola temple. This is a concrete example of "revival of local Hindu traditions without religious discrimination" applied at a regional level.
• Early modernity from an Indian ruler. Serfoji II's free hospital mixing Indian and Western medicine, his press, and his Marathi play on world geography show an Indian ruler absorbing European knowledge on his own terms — a counterpoint to the claim that modern institutions came only from colonial rule. His library survives as a state-funded research centre today. [2]
• Swarajya as an idea with a long life. The Maratha legacy is argued in two registers: the material (largest pre-British empire, new administration, a navy that resisted Europeans without matching their technology) and the ideological (Swarajya feeding later belief in self-government). The second is the NCERT chapter's interpretive claim about the seeds of the freedom movement, and should be presented as such in an answer.