पानीपत १७६१ (मराठा साम्राज्य एवं पानीपत महायुद्ध इतिहास)

CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 131
wards It is ostensibly written to glorify the achievements of the Shindes and
these have no direct connection with the battle of Panipat. The author is
evidently a biased person and on that account tries to supply and explain the
genesis, the events and the activities behind the scenes of actual narration with
all the personal bickerings of the actors in their full gusto The reports of
these bickerings and their actual wording may or may not be true in their full
import, but it is clear that they throw a necessary light on the seamy side of
history We shall have to discount much of this report due to the bias of
the author Another thing which has to be borne in mind is the fact that
these reports must have necessarily come from the persons who ran away from
the field of battle and as such were dubbed as renegades by the people at
large The odium of this obloquy and the guilty conscience of having failed
to be with their leaders in the thick of the fight, made the reports from these
survivors naturally colourful and excusatory Most of these persons had di
rect blame attached to their conduct and in sheer self-justification they gave
such a retrospective turn to their own and Bhaus conduct as to lead to the
disaster which would then appear inevitable If we compare the tone of the
letters¹² which some of these survivors sent previous to the battle with those
they wrote after it, we can understand the difference worked out in the minds
of these writers by the fatal disaster When the authors of the Kaifiyat and
the Bakhar wrote their accounts after a few years, the public in Maharashtra
had come to form some sort of plausible opinion about the great disaster, after
hearing, explaining, accounting and guessing about the various reports brought
from the distant field The boiled essence of all these is found written in the
Bakhar Sadashivrao Bhau was out to give a new turn to the ancient mode
of Maratha warfare which was taken to be of the guerilla type Bhau had
introduced the trained infantry tactics and tried to combine them with the
original mode The good result of this innovation had been reaped in the
Udgir campaign The Udgir victory had naturally increased the prestige of
Ibrahim Khan Gardi and his mode of warfare Throughout the Panipat cam-
paign, Bhau had put his main confidence in these infantry corps and they
also gave a very good account of themselves The idea of entrenching at
Panipat was a result of these tactics It made the Marathas unassailable so
long as they remained within their entrenchments Bhau expected Abdali to
attack them in this strong position, as he was sure of victory in the event of
such an attack But Abdali had understood it equally well He himself never
once tried to attack, and had strictly forbidden any one from his camp to go
out with a view to attacking He played a game of waiting and hoped to get
a victory when the Maratha army would come out due to starvation That is
why Bhau is found raging and almost railing against Govindpant Bundele for
not attacking Abdali from behind and making him compulsorily fall on the
Maratha entrenchments to his sure destruction When, due to the failure of
Govindpant and due to starvation, Bhau himself had to come out, that combi
nation of artillery, infantry and cavalry tactics which it was necessary to keep
12 RAJ Vol. 6 Cf Satvoji Jadhavrao's letters No 404 dated 18-9-1760 and No 409
dated 10-3-1761 also cf Nana Purandare's letters No 391 of 14-11-1760 in Purandare

• Daftar Pt. 1, and No 118 in Pt. III