Kannada
Kannada is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Kannada people in India in the state of Karnataka, by significant linguistic minorities in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and abroad. The language has 43.7 million native speakers, who are called Kannadigas. Kannada is spoken as a second and third language by over 12.9 million non-Kannada speakers living in Karnataka, which adds up to 56.6 million speakers. It is one of the scheduled languages of India and the official and administrative language of the state of Karnataka; the Kannada language is written using the Kannada script, which evolved from the 5th-century Kadamba script. Kannada is attested epigraphically for about one and a half millennia, literary Old Kannada flourished in the 6th-century Ganga dynasty and during the 9th-century Rashtrakuta Dynasty. Kannada has an unbroken literary history of over a thousand years. Kannada literature has been presented with 8 Jnanapith awards, the most for any Dravidian language and the second highest for any Indian language.
Based on the recommendations of the Committee of Linguistic Experts, appointed by the ministry of culture, the government of India designated Kannada a classical language of India. In July 2011, a center for the study of classical Kannada was established as part of the Central Institute of Indian Languages at Mysore to facilitate research related to the language. Kannada is a Southern Dravidian language, according to Dravidian scholar Sanford B. Steever, its history can be conventionally divided into three periods: Old Kannada from 450–1200 CE, Middle Kannada from 1200–1700, Modern Kannada from 1700 to the present. Kannada is influenced to an appreciable extent by Sanskrit. Influences of other languages such as Prakrit and Pali can be found in the Kannada language; the scholar Iravatham Mahadevan indicated that Kannada was a language of rich oral tradition earlier than the 3rd century BCE, based on the native Kannada words found in Prakrit inscriptions of that period, Kannada must have been spoken by a widespread and stable population.
The scholar K. V. Narayana claims that many tribal languages which are now designated as Kannada dialects could be nearer to the earlier form of the language, with lesser influence from other languages; the sources of influence on literary Kannada grammar appear to be three-fold: Pāṇini's grammar, non-Paninian schools of Sanskrit grammar Katantra and Sakatayana schools, Prakrit grammar. Literary Prakrit seems to have prevailed in Karnataka since ancient times; the vernacular Prakrit speaking people may have come into contact with Kannada speakers, thus influencing their language before Kannada was used for administrative or liturgical purposes. Kannada phonetics, vocabulary and syntax show significant influence from these languages; some naturalised words of Prakrit origin in Kannada are: baṇṇa derived from vaṇṇa, hunnime from puṇṇivā. Examples of naturalized Sanskrit words in Kannada are: varṇa, arasu from rajan, paurṇimā, rāya from rāja. Like the other Dravidian languages Kannada has borrowed words such as dina, surya, nimiṣa and anna.
Purava HaleGannada: This Kannada term translated means "Previous form of Old Kannada" was the language of Banavasi in the early Common Era, the Satavahana, Chutu Satakarni and Kadamba periods and thus has a history of over 2500 years. The Ashoka rock edict found at Brahmagiri has been suggested to contain words in identifiable Kannada. According to Jain tradition, the daughter of Rishabhadeva, the first Tirthankara of Jainism, invented 18 alphabets, including Kannada, which points to the antiquity of the language. Supporting this tradition, an inscription of about the 9th century CE, containing specimens of different alphabets Dravidian, was discovered in a Jain temple in the Deogarh fort. In some 3rd–1st century BCE Tamil inscriptions, words of Kannada influence such as'nalliyooraa','kavuDi' and posil' have been introduced; the use of the vowel a' as an adjective is not prevalent in Tamil but its usage is available in Kannada. Kannada words such as'gouDi-gavuDi' transform into Tamil's kavuDi' for lack of the usage of Ghosha svana in Tamil.
Hence the Kannada word'gavuDi' becomes'kavuDi' in Tamil.'Posil' was introduced into Tamil from Kannada and colloquial Tamil uses this word as'Vaayil'. In a 1st-century CE Tamil inscription, there is a personal reference to ayjayya', a word of Kannada origin. In a 3rd-century CE Tamil inscription there is usage of'oppanappa vIran'. Here the honorific'appa' to a person's name is an influence from Kannada. Another word of Kannada origin is found in a 4th-century CE Tamil inscription. S. Settar studied the'sittanvAsal' inscription of first century CE as the inscriptions at'tirupparamkunram','adakala' and'neDanUpatti'; the inscriptions were studied in detail by Iravatham Mahadevan also. Mahadevan argues that the words'erumi','kavuDi','poshil' and'tAyiyar' have their origin in Kannada because Tamil cognates are not available. Settar adds the words'nADu' and'iLayar' to this list. Mahadevan feels that some grammatical categories found in these inscriptions are unique to Kannada rather than Tamil. Both these scholars attribute these influences to the movements and spread of Jainas in these regions.
These inscriptions belong to the period between the first century BCE and fourth century CE. These are some examples that are proof of the early usage of a few Kannada origin words in early Tamil inscriptions before the common era and in the
Hindus
Hindus are persons who regard themselves as culturally, ethnically, or religiously adhering to aspects of Hinduism. The term has been used as a geographical and religious identifier for people indigenous to the Indian subcontinent; the historical meaning of the term Hindu has evolved with time. Starting with the Persian and Greek references to the land of the Indus in the 1st millennium BCE through the texts of the medieval era, the term Hindu implied a geographic, ethnic or cultural identifier for people living in the Indian subcontinent around or beyond the Sindhu river. By the 16th century, the term began to refer to residents of the subcontinent who were not Turkic or Muslims; the historical development of Hindu self-identity within the local South Asian population, in a religious or cultural sense, is unclear. Competing theories state that Hindu identity developed in the British colonial era, or that it developed post-8th century CE after the Islamic invasion and medieval Hindu-Muslim wars.
A sense of Hindu identity and the term Hindu appears in some texts dated between the 13th and 18th century in Sanskrit and regional languages. The 14th- and 18th-century Indian poets such as Vidyapati and Eknath used the phrase Hindu dharma and contrasted it with Turaka dharma; the Christian friar Sebastiao Manrique used the term'Hindu' in religious context in 1649. In the 18th century, the European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus, in contrast to Mohamedans for Mughals and Arabs following Islam. By the mid-19th century, colonial orientalist texts further distinguished Hindus from Buddhists and Jains, but the colonial laws continued to consider all of them to be within the scope of the term Hindu until about mid-20th century. Scholars state that the custom of distinguishing between Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs is a modern phenomenon. Hindoo is an archaic spelling variant. At more than 1.03 billion, Hindus are the world's third largest group after Muslims.
The vast majority of Hindus 966 million, live in India, according to India's 2011 census. After India, the next 9 countries with the largest Hindu populations are, in decreasing order: Nepal, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, United States, United Kingdom and Myanmar; these together accounted for 99% of the world's Hindu population, the remaining nations of the world together had about 6 million Hindus in 2010. The word Hindu is derived from the Indo-Aryan and Sanskrit word Sindhu, which means "a large body of water", covering "river, ocean", it was used as the name of the Indus river and referred to its tributaries. The actual term'hindu' first occurs, states Gavin Flood, as "a Persian geographical term for the people who lived beyond the river Indus", more in the 6th-century BCE inscription of Darius I; the Punjab region, called Sapta Sindhu in the Vedas, is called Hapta Hindu in Zend Avesta. The 6th-century BCE inscription of Darius I mentions the province of Hidush, referring to northwestern India; the people of India were referred to as Hinduvān and hindavī was used as the adjective for Indian in the 8th century text Chachnama.
The term'Hindu' in these ancient records is an ethno-geographical term and did not refer to a religion. The Arabic equivalent Al-Hind referred to the country of India. Among the earliest known records of'Hindu' with connotations of religion may be in the 7th-century CE Chinese text Record of the Western Regions by the Buddhist scholar Xuanzang. Xuanzang uses the transliterated term In-tu whose "connotation overflows in the religious" according to Arvind Sharma. While Xuanzang suggested that the term refers to the country named after the moon, another Buddhist scholar I-tsing contradicted the conclusion saying that In-tu was not a common name for the country. Al-Biruni's 11th-century text Tarikh Al-Hind, the texts of the Delhi Sultanate period use the term'Hindu', where it includes all non-Islamic people such as Buddhists, retains the ambiguity of being "a region or a religion". The'Hindu' community occurs as the amorphous'Other' of the Muslim community in the court chronicles, according to Romila Thapar.
Wilfred Cantwell Smith notes that'Hindu' retained its geographical reference initially:'Indian','indigenous, local', virtually'native'. The Indian groups themselves started using the term, differentiating themselves and their "traditional ways" from those of the invaders; the text Prithviraj Raso, by Chanda Baradai, about the 1192 CE defeat of Prithviraj Chauhan at the hands of Muhammad Ghori, is full of references to "Hindus" and "Turks", at one stage, says "both the religions have drawn their curved swords. In Islamic literature,'Abd al-Malik Isami's Persian work, Futuhu's-salatin, composed in the Deccan in 1350, uses the word'hindi' to mean Indian in the ethno-geographical sense and the word'hindu' to mean'Hindu' in the sense of a follower of the Hindu religion"; the poet Vidyapati's poem Kirtilata contrasts the cultures of Hindus and Turks in a city and concludes "The Hindus and the Turks live close together. One of the earliest uses of word'Hindu' in religious context in a European language, was the publication in 1649 by Sebastiao Manrique.
Other prominent mentions of'Hindu' include the epigraphical inscriptions from Andhra Pradesh kingdoms who battled military expansion of Muslim dynasties in the 14th century, where the word'Hindu' implies a religious identity in contrast to'Turks' or Islam
Kingdom of Mysore
The Kingdom of Mysore was a kingdom in southern India, traditionally believed to have been founded in 1399 in the vicinity of the modern city of Mysore. The kingdom, ruled by the Wodeyar family served as a vassal state of the Vijayanagara Empire. With the decline of the Vijayanagara Empire, the kingdom became independent; the 17th century saw a steady expansion of its territory and during the rule of Narasaraja Wodeyar I and Chikka Devaraja Wodeyar, the kingdom annexed large expanses of what is now southern Karnataka and parts of Tamil Nadu to become a powerful state in the southern Deccan. The kingdom reached the height of its economic and military power and dominion in the latter half of the 18th century under the de facto ruler Haider Ali and his son Tipu Sultan. During this time, it came into conflict with the Marathas, the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Kingdom of Travancore and the British, which culminated in the four Anglo-Mysore Wars. Success in the first Anglo-Mysore war and a stalemate in the second was followed by defeat in the third and fourth.
Following Tipu's death in the fourth war of 1799, large parts of his kingdom were annexed by the British, which signalled the end of a period of Mysorean hegemony over southern Deccan. The British restored the Wodeyars to their throne by way of a subsidiary alliance and the diminished Mysore was transformed into a princely state; the Wodeyars continued to rule the state until Indian independence in 1947, when Mysore acceded to the Union of India. As a princely state, Mysore came to be counted among the more developed and urbanised regions of India; this period saw Mysore emerge as one of the important centres of art and culture in India. The Mysore kings were not only accomplished exponents of the fine arts and men of letters, they were enthusiastic patrons as well, their legacies continue to influence music and art today. Sources for the history of the kingdom include numerous extant lithic and copper plate inscriptions, records from the Mysore palace and contemporary literary sources in Kannada and other languages.
According to traditional accounts, the kingdom originated as a small state based in the modern city of Mysore and was founded by two brothers and Krishnaraya. Their origins are still a matter of debate. Yaduraya is said to have married Chikkadevarasi, the local princess and assumed the feudal title "Wodeyar", which the ensuing dynasty retained; the first unambiguous mention of the Wodeyar family is in 16th century Kannada literature from the reign of the Vijayanagara king Achyuta Deva Raya. The kings who followed ruled as vassals of the Vijayanagara empire until the decline of the latter in 1565. By this time, the kingdom had expanded to thirty-three villages protected by a force of 300 soldiers. King Timmaraja II conquered some surrounding chiefdoms, King Bola Chamaraja IV, the first ruler of any political significance among them, withheld tribute to the nominal Vijayanagara monarch Aravidu Ramaraya. After the death of Aravidu Aliya Rama Raya, the Wodeyars began to assert themselves further and King Raja Wodeyar I wrested control of Srirangapatna from the Vijayanagara governor Aravidu Tirumalla – a development which elicited, if only ex post facto, the tacit approval of Venkatapati Raya, the incumbent king of the diminished Vijayanagar empire ruling from Chandragiri.
Raja Wodeyar I's reign saw territorial expansion with the annexation of Channapatna to the north from Jaggadeva Raya – a development which made Mysore a regional political factor to reckon with. By 1612–13, the Wodeyars exercised a great deal of autonomy and though they acknowledged the nominal overlordship of the Aravidu dynasty and transfers of revenue to Chandragiri stopped; this was in marked contrast to other major chiefs Nayaks of Tamil country who continued to pay off Chandragiri emperors well into the 1630s. Chamaraja VI and Kanthirava Narasaraja I attempted to expand further northward but were thwarted by the Bijapur Sultanate and its Maratha subordinates, though the Bijapur armies under Ranadullah Khan were repelled in their 1638 siege of Srirangapatna. Expansionist ambitions turned southward into Tamil country where Narasaraja Wodeyar acquired Satyamangalam while his successor Dodda Devaraja Wodeyar expanded further to capture western Tamil regions of Erode and Dharmapuri, after repulsing the chiefs of Madurai.
The invasion of the Keladi Nayakas of Malnad was dealt with successfully. This period was followed by one of complex geo-political changes, when in the 1670s, the Marathas and the Mughals pressed into the Deccan. Chikka Devaraja, the most notable of Mysore's early kings, who ruled during much of this period, managed to not only survive the exigencies but further expanded territory, he achieved this by forging strategic alliances with the Marathas and the Mughals. The kingdom soon grew to include Salem and Bangalore to the east, Hassan to the west and Tumkur to the north and the rest of Coimbatore to the south. Despite this expansion, the kingdom, which now accounted for a fair share of land in the southern Indian heartland, extending from the Western Ghats to the western boundaries of the Coromandel plain, remained landlocked without direct coastal access. Chikka Devaraja's attempts to remedy this brought Mysore into conflict with the Nayaka chiefs of Ikkeri and the kings of Kodagu.
States and union territories of India
India is a federal union comprising 29 states and 7 union territories, for a total of 36 entities. The states and union territories are further subdivided into districts and smaller administrative divisions; the Constitution of India distributes the sovereign executive and legislative powers exercisable with respect to the territory of any State between the Union and that State. The Indian subcontinent has been ruled by many different ethnic groups throughout its history, each instituting their own policies of administrative division in the region. During the British Raj, the original administrative structure was kept, India was divided into provinces that were directly governed by the British and princely states which were nominally controlled by a local prince or raja loyal to the British Empire, which held de facto sovereignty over the princely states. Between 1947 and 1950 the territories of the princely states were politically integrated into the Indian Union. Most were merged into existing provinces.
The new Constitution of India, which came into force on 26 January 1950, made India a sovereign democratic republic. The new republic was declared to be a "Union of States"; the constitution of 1950 distinguished between three main types of states: Part A states, which were the former governors' provinces of British India, were ruled by an elected governor and state legislature. The nine Part A states were Assam, Bombay, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal; the eight Part B states were former princely states or groups of princely states, governed by a rajpramukh, the ruler of a constituent state, an elected legislature. The rajpramukh was appointed by the President of India; the Part B states were Hyderabad and Kashmir, Madhya Bharat, Mysore and East Punjab States Union, Rajasthan and Travancore-Cochin. The ten Part C states included both the former chief commissioners' provinces and some princely states, each was governed by a chief commissioner appointed by the President of India.
The Part C states were Ajmer, Bilaspur, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur and Vindhya Pradesh. The only Part D state was the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which were administered by a lieutenant governor appointed by the central government; the Union Territory of Puducherry was created in 1954 comprising the previous French enclaves of Pondichéry, Karaikal and Mahé. Andhra State was created on 1 October 1953 from the Telugu-speaking northern districts of Madras State; the States Reorganisation Act of 1956 reorganised the states based on linguistic lines resulting in the creation of the new states. As a result of this act, Madras State retained its name with Kanyakumari district added to form Travancore-Cochin. Andhra Pradesh was created with the merger of Andhra State with the Telugu-speaking districts of Hyderabad State in 1956. Kerala was created with the merger of Malabar district and the Kasaragod taluk of South Canara districts of Madras State with Travancore-Cochin. Mysore State was re-organized with the addition of districts of Bellary and South Canara and the Kollegal taluk of Coimbatore district from the Madras State, the districts of Belgaum, North Canara and Dharwad from Bombay State, the Kannada-majority districts of Bidar and Gulbarga from Hyderabad State and the province of Coorg.
The Laccadive Islands which were divided between South Canara and Malabar districts of Madras State were united and organised into the union territory of Lakshadweep. Bombay State was enlarged by the addition of Saurashtra State and Kutch State, the Marathi-speaking districts of Nagpur Division of Madhya Pradesh and Marathwada region of Hyderabad State. Rajasthan and Punjab gained territories from Ajmer and Patiala and East Punjab States Union and certain territories of Bihar was transferred to West Bengal. Bombay State was split into the linguistic states of Gujarat and Maharashtra on 1 May 1960 by the Bombay Reorganisation Act. Nagaland was formed on 1 December 1963; the Punjab Reorganisation Act of 1966 resulted in the creation of Haryana on 1 November and the transfer of the northern districts of Punjab to Himachal Pradesh. The act designated Chandigarh as a union territory and the shared capital of Punjab and Haryana. Madras state was renamed Tamil Nadu in 1968. North-eastern states of Manipur and Tripura were formed on 21 January 1972.
Mysore State was renamed as Karnataka in 1973. On 16 May 1975, Sikkim became the 22nd state of the Indian Union and the state's monarchy was abolished. In 1987, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram became states on 20 February, followed by Goa on 30 May, while Goa's northern exclaves of Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli became separate union territories. In November 2000, three new states were created. Orissa was renamed as Odisha in 2011. Telangana was created on 2 June 2014 as ten former districts of north-western Andhra Pradesh. ^Note 1 Andhra Pradesh was divided into two states, Telangana and a residual Andhra Pradesh on 2 June 2014. Hyderabad, located within the borders of Telangana, is to serve as the capital for both states for a period of time not exceeding ten years; the Go
Adel Shah
Adel Shah Afshar, born ʿAlī-qolī Khan was the Afsharid Shah of Iran from 1747 to 1748, a nephew and successor of Nader Shah, the founder of the Afsharid dynasty. Ali-qoli khan was the eldest son of Ebrahim Khan. Nader appointed him governor of Mashad in 1737. In the same year he married Princess Ketevan, daughter of the Georgian king Teimuraz II, Nader's ally. In 1740 he was married to a daughter of Abu'l-Fayz, ruler of the subdued Bokhara. From 1743 to 1747, Ali-qoli khan commanded Nader's troops against the Yazidis of Kurdistan, the Karakalpaks and Uzbeks of Khwarazm and in Sistan, he ran in trouble with his uncle over the latter's decision to levy 100,000 tomans on him combined with Nader's suspiciousness. In April 1747, in conjunction with the rebels of Sistan, Ali-qoli khan occupied Herat and induced the Kurds to enter into a rebellion. Nader, while marching against the insurgents, was murdered by a group of his officers, who offered the crown to Ali-qoli. On arriving at Mashad, Ali-qoli sent a loyal force to the fortress of Kalat, where they killed all of Nader's issue with the exception of his 14-year-old grandson Shahrokh Mirza.
On 6 July 1747, he was declared the shah under the name of Adel-Shah, "the just king". He sent his brother Ebrahim Mirza as a governor to Isfahan, while he remained in Mashad with his unpopular Georgian favourite, Sohrab Khan; that year, he defeated his erstwhile Kurdish allies, who had refused to supply grain for his famine-stricken army and capital, had several of his supporters put to death on suspicion of conspiracy. He marched against Mazandaran in a futile attempt to bend the Qajar tribe into submission; the Qajar chief Mohammad Hasan Khan was killed and his four-year-old son, the future Agha Mohammad Khan, was castrated on Adel's orders. In the meantime, Ebrahim Mirza, who had consolidated his hold over western Iran, rose in rebellion against his reigning brother, he murdered Adel's favourite Sohrab Khan and in, June 1748, he marched to join his forces with Amir Aslan Khan, the sardar of Azerbaijan against Adel. The latter, at the head of a numerically superior army, advanced from Gilan to prevent the rebel forces combining, but the defection of many of his commanders precipitated his complete defeat.
Adel fled to Tehran. Six months Ebrahim was proclaimed shah, but his reign was terminated by a coup which brought Nadir's surviving grandson Shahrokh Mirza to the throne. Ebrahim was blinded and soon died, while Adel was sent in chains to Mashad, where he was tortured to death
Balaji Baji Rao
Balaji Baji Rao known as Nana Saheb, was a Peshwa of the Maratha Empire in India. He was appointed as Peshwa in 1740 upon the death of his illustrious father, the Peshwa Bajirao I. During his tenure, the Chhatrapati was reduced to a mere figurehead. At the same time, the Maratha empire started transforming into a confederacy, in which individual chiefs — such as the Holkars, the Scindias and the Bhonsles of Nagpur kingdom — became more powerful. During Balaji Rao's tenure, the Maratha territory reached its zenith. A large part of this expansion, was led by the individual chiefs, whose acts of plundering alienated the masses. By the end of Balaji Baji Rao's tenure, the Peshwa was reduced to more of a financier than a general. Unlike his father, Balaji baji Rao was not a great military leader and failed to gauge the seriousness of Durrani invasions in northern India; this resulted in a massive Maratha defeat at the Third Battle of Panipat. Some judicial and revenue reforms were made during his tenure, but the credit for these goes to his cousin Sadashivrao Bhau and his associate Balshastri Gadgil.
Balaji Rao was born in the Bhat family, to Peshwa Baji Rao I, on 8 December 1720. After Baji Rao died in April 1740, Chhatrapati Shahu appointed 19-year old Balaji as the Peshwa in August 1740, despite opposition from other chiefs such as Shahu's own relative Raghoji I Bhonsle, he was married to Gopikabai. The couple had three sons, Vishwasrao who died in the battle of Panipat in 1761, Madhavrao who succeeded Nanasaheb as Peshwa and Narayanrao who succeeded Madhavrao in his late teens. Nanasaheb had an able brother called Raghunathrao whose ambitions to be the Peshwa became disastrous for the Maratha empire. In early years of Balaji Rao's tenure, Raghoji I Bhonsle helped extend Maratha influence in South and East India. However, he was not on good terms with the Peshwa. Shortly before Balaji's appointment as the Peshwa, Raghoji had led a Maratha force to South India, his mission was to help Pratap Singh of Thanjavur, a royal of the Bhonsle clan, against Dost Ali Khan. Raghoji killed Dost Ali in May 1740, installed Dost Ali's son Safdar Ali Khan as the Nawab of Arcot.
He returned to Satara, unsuccessfully lodged a protest against Balaji Rao's appointment as the Peshwa. He returned to South India, where he defeated Chanda Sahib in March 1741, before being forced to retreat by Chanda Sahib's French allies from Pondicherry. After returning to Satara, Raghoji continued to oppose Balaji Rao. In 1743, Raghoji Bhonsle attacked Alivardi Khan's forces in Orissa. Khan paid ₹ 2,000,000 to Balaji Rao, who helped him expel Raghoji from Orissa in 1744. Raghoji complained to Chhatrapati Shahu, got himself appointed the in-charge of Marathas in Orissa and Bihar. By 1752, Raghoji had taken over administration of Orissa, frequently raided Bengal and Bihar to collect chauth; the instability brought by him to Bengal paved way for the rise of the East India Company there. The Maratha noblewoman Tarabai was the head of a family, a rival claimant to the Chhatrapati title. A rival of Chhatrapati Shahu, she pretended reconciliation with him. In the 1740s, during the last years of Shahu's life, Tarabai brought a child to him: Rajaram II.
She presented the child as her grandson, thus, a direct descendant of Shivaji. Shahu adopted the child, after his death in 1749, Rajaram II succeeded him as the Chhatrapati; the next year, Peshwa Balaji Rao left to fight against the Nizam of Hyderabad. In his absence, Tarabai urged Rajaram II to remove him from the post of Peshwa; when Rajaram refused, she imprisoned him in a dungeon at Satara, on 24 November 1750. She claimed that he was an impostor, that she had falsely presented him as her grandson. Tarabai was unsuccessful in getting support from the Nizam Salabat Jung. However, she managed to enlist the help of Umabai Dabhade. Umabai Dabhade was the matriarch of the Dabhade family, whose members held the title of senapati and controlled several territories in Gujarat, her husband had been killed by the Mughals, her eldest son had been killed by Balaji Rao's father for a rebellion against Chhatrapati Shahu. However, Shahu had forgiven the Dabhades and allowed them to retain their jagirs and titles on the condition that they would remit half of the revenues collected from Gujarat to his treasury.
Umabai's minor son Yashwant Rao was made the titular senapati, while she held the actual executive power in Maratha territories of Gujarat. The Dabhades never shared any revenues, but Shahu did not want to take any action against a grieving mother. However, after Shahu's death Peshwa Balaji Rao faced an empty treasury and pressurized the Dabhades to share Gujarat revenues as per the agreement. Umabai met him in 1750 and argued that the agreement was void because the Dabhades had signed it under force; the Peshwa refused to entertain this argument. Umabai dispatched 15,000 troops led by her lieutenant Damaji Rao Gaekwad in support of Tarabai's rebellion. Gaekwad advanced towards Pune, prompting the Peshwa's mother Kashibai and his grandmother Radhabai to flee from Pune to Sinhagad. While encamped at Pargaon near Pune, he received a letter from the Peshwa loyalist Mahadji Purandare, who denounced him as a traitor. Subsequently, Gaekwad started advancing towards Satara. Mahadji's brother Trimbakrao Purandare led a 20,000-strong force against him.
Gaekwad defeated him at a small town north of Satara. He marched to Satara, where he was received by Tarabai. However, Trimbakrao re-formed his army and on 15 March 1751, he attacked Gaekwad's army, encamped on the banks of the Venna River. Gaekwad was de
Hyder Ali
Hyder Ali, Haidarālī was the Sultan and de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore in southern India. Born as Sayyid Mir Hyder Ali, he distinguished himself militarily drawing the attention of Mysore's rulers. Rising to the post of Dalavayi to Krishnaraja Wodeyar II, he came to dominate the titular monarch and the Mysore government, he became the de facto ruler of Mysore as Sarvadhikari by 1761. He offered strong resistance against the military advances of the British East India Company during the First and Second Anglo–Mysore Wars, he was the innovator of military use of the iron-cased Mysorean rockets, he significantly developed Mysore's economy. Though illiterate, Hyder Ali earned an important place in the history of southern India for his administrative acumen and military skills, he concluded an alliance with the French against the British and used the services of French workmen in raising his artillery and arsenal. His rule of Mysore was characterised by frequent warfare with his neighbours and rebellion within his territories.
This was not unusual for the time as much of the Indian subcontinent was in turmoil. He left his eldest son, Tipu Sultan, an extensive kingdom bordered by the Krishna River in the north, the Eastern Ghats in the east and the Arabian Sea in the west; the exact date of Hyder Ali's birth is not known with certainty. Various historical sources provide dates ranging between 1722 for his birth. There are some variations in reports of his ancestry. According to some accounts, his grandfather was descended from a line tracing their lineage back to Baghdad, while another traces his lineage instead to the area of present-day Afghanistan. In a third account, written by one of his French military officers, Hyder himself claimed descent from the Arabs Bani Hashim clan of the Quraysh, the tribe of the Prophet Muhammad, his father, Fath Muhammad, was born in Kolar, served as a commander of 50 men in the bamboo rocket artillery in the army of the Nawab of Carnatic. Fath Muhammad entered the service of the Wodeyar Rajas of the Kingdom of Mysore, where he rose to become a powerful military commander.
The Wodeyars awarded him Budikote as a jagir, where he served as Naik. Hyder Ali was born in Budikote, his early years are not well documented. After serving for a number of years under the rulers of Arcot, they came to Seringapatam, where Hyder's uncle served, he introduced them to Devaraja, the dalwai of Krishnaraja Wodeyar II, his brother Nanjaraja, who held important ministerial posts. Hyder and his brother were both given commands in the Mysorean army. In 1748, Qamar-ud-din Khan, Asaf Jah I, the longtime Nizam of Hyderabad, died; the struggle to succeed him is known as the Second Carnatic War, pitted Asaf Jah's son Nasir Jung against a nephew, Muzaffar Jung. Both sides were supported by other local leaders, French and British forces were involved. Devaraja had started vesting more military authority in his brother, in 1749 Nanjaraja marched the Mysorean army in support of Nasir Jung; the army went to Devanhalli. The fort was held by Muzaffar Jung's forces and the siege was conducted by the Marquis de Bussy.
During the successful eight-month siege, the Hyder Ali and his brother distinguished themselves, were rewarded by the dalwai with enlarged commands. By 1755 Hyder Ali commanded 3,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry, was reported to be enriching himself on campaigns by plunder. In that year he was appointed Faujdar of Dindigul. In this position he first retained French advisers to train his artillery companies, he is known to have served alongside de Bussy, is believed to have met both Muzaffar Jung and Chanda Shahib. In these early wars he came to dislike and mistrust Muhammed Ali Khan Wallajah, the Nawab of the Carnatic. In fact Muhammed Ali Khan Wallajah and the Mysorean leaders were long at odds with each other, seeking territorial gains at the other's expense. Muhammad Ali Khan Wallajah had by formed an alliance with the British, he was accused by Hyder Ali in years of preventing him from making any sort of long-lasting alliances or agreements with the British. Throughout the Carnatic Wars, Hyder Ali and his Mysore battalions served alongside French commanders such as Joseph Francois Dupleix, Count de Lally and de Bussy, he assisted Chanda Sahib on various occasions.
Hyder Ali supported the claims of Muzaffar Jung and sided with Salabat Jung. Early in his career, Hyder Ali retained as one of his chief financial assistants a Brahmin named Khande Rao. Hyder Ali, illiterate, was reported to be blessed with a prodigious memory and numerical acumen. Hyder Ali could rival or outperform expert accountants with his great arithmetic skills and worked to develop a system, with Rao, that included checks and balances so sophisticated that all manner of income, including plunder of physical goods of all types, could be accounted for with little possibility for fraud or embezzlement; this financial management may have played a role in Hyder Ali's rise in power. In 1757 Hyder Ali was called to Seringapatam to support Devaraja against threats from Hyderabad and the Marathas. Upon his arrival he found the Mysorean army in near mutiny over pay. While Devaraja bought his way out of the threats to Seringapatam, Hyder Ali ar
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