It was in the time of Malik-Ambêr, the Abyssinian slave who in the reign of Jahângir gave new life to the dying dynasty in the Dekkan, that the Mahrattas first made their mark. Before this, history does not even recognise them. Amongst the Mahratta officers of Malik-Ambêr was one Mâlo-ji, who had a five-year-old son called Shâh-ji. To a Hindu festival at the house of a Râjput this boy was taken, and by chance was lifted to one knee of the host, whose little daughter of three occupied the other. "They are a fine couple," laughed the host and father. "They should be man and wife!" This was enough for Mâlo-ji's ambition. He started up, and called the company to witness that the girl was affianced to his son. Naturally enough, the claim roused indignation; but in the end, Mâlo-ji's fortunes improving, Shâh-ji gained his high-caste bride, and from the marriage sprang Siva-ji, the national hero of the Mahrattas, who was destined to wreck the power of the Moghuls in the south. Siva-ji, by the time he was sixteen, was already notorious. His love of adventure, his knowledge of the popular ballads of the people, his complicity in the great gang-robberies which formed an ever-recurring excitement to life in the Ghâts, his intimate acquaintance with every footpath and defile in that wild country, his horsemanship, his sportsmanship, were on the tongues of all; and when, still in his teens, he fortified one of the neglected hill-citadels and set up a chieftainship of his own, there were not wanting those who laughed at the impertinence as a high-spirited, boyish freak. But within a few years the boyish freak was found to be open rebellion, and Siva-ji was practically king of the wild western country. What is more, he had become an ardent Hindu, and laid claims to Divine dreams. The court at Bîjapur attempted remonstrance, imprisoned poor Shâh-ji, his father, and threatened to wall him up unless Siva-ji repented of his errors: whereupon, with the cunning which distinguished him in all things, the latter made overtures to, and was taken into the service of, Shâhjahân, then engaged in the Dekkan. So for a few years affairs remained at a deadlock; Siva-ji, apprehensive for his father, Bîjapur of the Moghuls. Then Shâh-ji being released, his son began his career of annexation afresh, being checked, however, in his depredations by fear of Prince Aurungzebe, who was then fighting the King of Golconda. Both of the same kidney, artful, designing, specious, the diplomacies which passed between the Mahratta robber-chieftain and Aurungzebe, intent on stealing the throne of India, cannot have been edifying. The former took the opportunity of the latter's hasty retreat on the news of his father's illness, to increase his power by an act of double-dyed treachery. He induced the commander of the King of Bîjapur's forces to come unattended to the hill fort of Partabghar in order to receive his submission. The scene is dramatic.