पानीपत १७६१ (मराठा साम्राज्य एवं पानीपत महायुद्ध इतिहास)

46 PANIPAT 1761 very remote, still peace parleys continued throughout. Najib Khan's proposal forwarded through Shuja was to hand over the regions beyond Sarhind to Abdali and hand over the Delhi affairs into his hands Shuja wanted the Chancellorship as well as the command over the army of the Mughal Em pire ⁶⁸ But Najib would never allow the military command to pass out of his hands Bhau's idea was to fix the boundary at Attock, leaving Peshawar and Kabul to Abdali, while the imperial defence would be left as it was, meaning through the agency of the Marathas But Bhau was not obstinate on any point. He knew that no one could have everything his own way In diplo macy "give and take" is necessary and inevitable, and therefore he still hoped to find a via media out of the impasse The condition in the middle of September was as follows There was no money left in the government treasury nor was any forthcoming from the revenue collectors like Govindpant Bundele Bhau knew the economic con dition of the region surrounding Delhi very well and understood the difficulties of recovering government dues in the then conditions of northern India Be sides the military trouble due to war with Abdali, nature also had some say in the affair Hail storms and certain pests had that year destroyed the crops in many parts and there was a consequent deficit in revenue collection ⁶⁹ The dismissal of old collectors like Naro Shankar and his brother and recently of Mahadaji Govind Kakirde⁷⁰ appointed in his place, had adversely affected the Maratha revenues in Bundelkhand Bhau also suspected the sincerity of the collectors who, he thought, were withholding payments with a view to take advantage of the difficulties of the government ⁷¹ They would pay after the event instead of before it, as they were not sure of the result of the war and hoped to profit thereby As the army was starving and not even a week's payment out of the month could be made to them, Bhau had recourse to the politically disastrous action of taking out the silver ceiling of the Diwan i khas, and minting it into money He was able to secure only nine lakhs by this process and thereby feed his army for one month only It seems this action was tom tomed as insulting to the Mughal throne by the Muslim partisans of Najib, and it inflamed the Muslim population in the surrounding regions against the Marathas As a matter of fact, the Wazir Ghazi ud din had already taken out a part of that very ceiling previously when he was in need of money, and Bhau was not the first vandal to touch it as made out by partisan his- torians ⁷² But none seemed to have noticed the Wazir's act while all flared up against Bhau's behaviour When the famous peacock throne of Shah Jahan was taken away by Nadir Shah or when the whole palace and its inmates were completely stripped of their effects by Abdali, none seemed to have thought these as an insult to the Mughal throne then, possibly because the spoliators were devout Muslims 68 Purandare 1.389 69 Shinde 1.222 Purandare 1.386. 70 Satara 2.291 Dabholkar Mss. 152. 71 SPD 27.234. 72 Ibid 27.257