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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 November 2009
On the last occasion on which we met, I was permitted by your indulgence to read a piece of autobiography of Nana Farnevís, one of the most eminent persons who have become familiarly known to us since our first connexion with India. I stated that a vast number of the private and confidential papers of that extraordinary personage had fallen into my hands previously to my quitting India; and that a small, but interesting portion of them, had been translated by me and brought to this country. These translations have been submitted to two or three of the most distinguished members of our Society; and they have been pleased to express a wish that some of them might bebrought to the notice of the Society, and explained by a narrative of the circumstances that led to their being written. The letters commence with the public life of Nana Farnevís in 1761, and end with the fall of his power as minister to the Peshwa in 1796. They form valuable materials to elucidate his conduct during his long and arduous official career; but they are the more remarkable for the insight they afford us into the secret springs which seem to have regulated the behaviour of his illustrious master and sovereign Madhu Rao the Great, who, as I have before mentioned, asended the throne in his sixteenth, and died in his twenty-eighth year.
page 109 note * Page 95
page 112 note * 26th March 1741.
page 114 note * December 1761.
page 116 note * The generalissimo.
page 117 note * A town near Punderpore, on the Bhíma.
page 118 note * The very day of the battle.
page 124 note * Vol. i., p. 466.
page 138 note * This expression alludes to the occupation of Sewnere by Ragoba's troops.
page 141 note * This number, at the request of his uncle, was increased to three hundred and fifty men.
page 149 note * This remarkable proposition requires some explanation. The most heinous crime of which a Hindu can be guilty is to cause the death of a Brahmin, and the crime would be considerably aggravated by that person being so near a relative as Ragoba was to Madhu Rao. The imposition therefore of terms which should drive him to the desperate resolve of starvation, of which the natives of India are frequently capable, would, by implication, bring the guilt of his uncle's murder on the nephew's head; and this article was therefore introduced to prevent its occurrence.
page 149 note † My Indian friends, who assisted me in examining this collection of papers, and who were about the court at the time, say this passage was considered to allude to Anandi Bhye. the wife or Ragoba, who was notorious for employing magicians and enchanters against Madhu Rao.
page 150 note * The words in italics have a pen run through them in the original, and this fact shews how Ragoba's mind vacillated on the point of any stated time for the restrictions.
page 156 note page 141 note * A village near Waí, where Nana's personal estate is situated, and on which his widow still resides.
page 159 note * In order to propitiate the gods, great men are weighed against gold, and the amount distributed in charity.
page 159 note † Vol. ii. page 241.
page 162 note * This person was Madiiu Rao's preceptor when he was a child; he afterwards became his domestic priest; and was his private treasurer. The money in his hands was, in fact, the privy purse which he bequeaths to the state.
page 165 note * The Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone.