Shiva Digvijaya

{{Short description|Biography of Shivaji (b.1630)}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2024}}

{{Use Indian English|date=September 2024}}

{{Infobox book

| name = Shiva Digvijaya

| author = Anonymous; attributed to Khando Ballal Chitnis by 19th-century editors

| title_orig = Shri-Shiva-Digvijaya

| orig_lang_code = mr

| country = India

| language = Marathi

| subject = Biography of Shivaji

| genre = Bakhar

| pub_date =

}}

Shri-Shiva-Digvijaya (IAST: Śrī-Śiva-Digvijaya) is a Marathi language biography of Shivaji, the founder of the Maratha Empire. The title of the text is also transliterated as Shiva-digvijay and Shiv-digvijay because of schwa deletion.

The text is an anonymous work,{{cite book |author=Prachi Deshpande |title=Creative Pasts: Historical Memory and Identity in Western India, 1700-1960 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=96qrAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA223 |year=2007 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-12486-7 |page=223 }} but L. K. Dandekar and P. R. Nandurbarkar - who edited it in 1895 - attributed its authorship to Khando Ballal (1718), the son of Shivaji's secretary Balaji Avji.{{cite book |author=Surendra Nath Sen |title=Administrative System of the Marathas |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jF8MAAAAIAAJ |year=1976 |publisher=K. P. Bagchi |pages=2–3 }} Historians such as Jadunath Sarkar and Surendra Nath Sen reject this attribution, and consider the text to be a modern forgery.{{cite book |author=Jagadish Narayan Sarkar |title=History of History Writing in Medieval India |url=https://archive.org/details/dli.bengal.10689.12225 |year=1977 |publisher=Ratna Prakashan |page=[https://archive.org/details/dli.bengal.10689.12225/page/n31 7] }} Astronomer S. B. Dixit dated the text to 1818 - a century later than the year that Dandekar and Nandurbarkar date it to.{{cite book |author1=B. K. Ahluwalia |author2=Shashi Ahluwalia |title=Shivaji and Indian Nationalism |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lAAeAAAAMAAJ |year=1984 |publisher=Cultural Publishing House |page=72 }}

Sarkar theorizes that the text was forged by a writer of Kayastha Prabhu caste to glorify the Kayasthas as Shivaji's greatest and most loyal supporters.{{cite book |editor=Hari Ram Gupta |title=Sir Jadunath Sarkar Commemoration Volumes: Life or letters of Sir Jadunath Sarkar |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FFzRAAAAMAAJ |year=1957 |publisher=Department of History, Panjab University |page=258 }} According to him, the text published by Dandekar and Nandurbarkar is a modern work, although its core portion may have been a lost work composed during 1760-1775.{{cite book |author=Dipesh Chakrabarty |title=The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and His Empire of Truth |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4gPhCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA158 |year=2015 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-24024-4 |page=158 }}