Tanaji Malusare and 300 Mavla Infantry Scaled the Cliff at Kondhana on 4 February 1670 and Took the Fort Now Called Sinhagad

About 300 Mavla infantry, the hill soldiers of Shivaji’s home country, went up a cliff at the Kondhana fort near Pune on rope ladders on the night of 4 February 1670, fought the Mughal garrison inside, and took the fort. Their leader, Tanaji Malusare, was killed in the fighting. His brother Suryaji rallied the men and finished the capture, and the fort is known today as Sinhagad, the Lion’s Fort. Stewart Gordon’s Cambridge history of the Marathas calls it the first and most spectacular success of Shivaji’s campaign to recover the forts he had given up.

This article follows the night through the Sabhasad Bakhar, a Marathi chronicle (bakhar) written for Shivaji’s son Rajaram, and through the historians who came after. It marks which famous details come from ballads, and then looks at the 2020 film Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior. Shivaji’s wider career is in tuput’s article on what the records say about Shivaji Maharaj.

The fort Shivaji handed over in June 1665

Kondana, as the older sources spell it, is placed by Jadunath Sarkar 11 miles south-west of Pune. He writes that Shivaji first secured it by bribing its Adil Shahi governor, and that the year is not known, though one local record gives 1647. Gordon says the hill fort commands Pune, which is why it mattered to anyone who wanted to hold the district. How Shivaji rose from a handful of hill forts is told in tuput’s article on one hill fort and an empire.

The Mughals tried to take it first. Maharaja Jaswant Singh besieged Kondana from November 1663. Sarkar writes that after about six months he made a rash assault, lost many hundreds of soldiers, and gave up the siege on 28 May 1664. Bhimsen Saksena, a Mughal official, records the same failure in the Tarikh-i-Dilkasha: repeated assaults on the ramparts, a great deal of gunpowder spent, and the fort still standing.

The fort changed hands in 1665 by negotiation. Mirza Raja Jai Singh of Amber, a Rajput general, had besieged Purandar that spring. On 11 June Shivaji came to Jai Singh’s tent at the foot of the hill, and the two sides bargained until midnight. Jai Singh wrote to Emperor Aurangzeb, in Sarkar’s translation, “I declined to abate a single fort.” The Treaty of Purandar gave 23 of Shivaji’s forts to the Mughals and left him 12, Rajgad among them.

Sarkar lists the surrendered forts from the Alamgirnama, the official history of Aurangzeb’s reign, and Kondana is third. At noon on 14 June 1665, Sarkar writes, Shivaji delivered it to Jai Singh’s son Kirat Singh and rode on to Rajgad.

Gordon describes the three years that followed as peaceful. Shivaji offered his submission, sent his son to enrol as a Mughal mansabdar (an officer holding a rank at court) and sent a small contingent to Aurangabad. The peace broke in autumn 1669, when the Mughals demanded that Shivaji repay the cost of his 1666 trip to Agra. Shivaji answered with rapid attacks on the forts he had ceded, and Kondana was the first.

What the Sabhasad Bakhar says

Krishnaji Anant Sabhasad wrote his account for Chhatrapati Rajaram, whom he served. Surendranath Sen, who translated it in 1920, dates it about sixteen years after Shivaji’s death, which is some 26 years after Sinhagad, and describes it as resting mainly on the writer’s own knowledge and on hearsay.

In Sabhasad’s telling, Shivaji returned from Agra and told his ministers and the Mavlas to recover the twenty-seven forts ceded to the Mughals. A Mavla captain, Tanaji Malsura in Sen’s spelling, answered, “I shall take the fort of Kondana.” He went below the fort with 500 men. Two bold Mavlas climbed the cliff at night “in the same manner as the monkeys move,” in Sen’s words, fixed a rope ladder, and 300 men went up.

Udebhan, a Rajput, commanded the fort. Sabhasad says 1,200 men, gunners, archers, lancers and swordsmen, rushed out with torches, and the Mavlas met them calling on Mahadev. Udebhan and Tanaji fought each other in person. Tanaji’s shield broke, he took the blows on his left hand, and both men died where they stood. Suryaji rallied the Mavlas, they killed the remaining Rajputs, and many of the garrison leapt from the cliff. Sabhasad counts twelve hundred dead.

The Marathas set fire to the thatched cavalry stables, and Shivaji saw the glow from Rajgad. The next day a spy brought news of Tanaji’s death. “One fort has been taken, but another fort is gone,” Shivaji says in Sen’s translation. Suryaji was praised and given a command, and the soldiers received gold bracelets.

What Sarkar, Grant Duff and the Mughal record add

Sarkar rebuilt the 1670 campaigns from the Persian court newsletters (akhbarat) and the Dilkasha, as well as the Marathi chronicles. His account agrees with Sabhasad on the core and adds detail. Koli guides who knew the place led Tanaji and 300 picked Mavla infantry up the less steep hillside near the Kalian gate. They went in by rope ladders and killed the sentries. The garrison fought desperately, the Mavlas raised their cry of Har Har Mahadev, and the two commanders fell after a single combat. Suryaji opened the Kalian gate to the supporting columns. Shivaji, nine miles away at Rajgad, saw the burning huts and knew the fort was taken. Sarkar writes that he mourned Tanaji as too high a price for it.

James Grant Duff, writing in 1826 from Marathi manuscripts and the English factory records, gives a longer version. A thousand Mavlas set out from Rajgad by separate paths and met near the fort on “the ninth night of the dark half of the moon, in the month Magh,” which is February. Fewer than 300 were inside when the garrison raised the alarm. In Grant Duff’s account Tanaji fell while the Mavlas were gaining ground, and the men began to run for the ropes. Suryaji, who had come up with the reserve, told them the ropes were destroyed and that this was their time to prove themselves Shivaji’s Mavlas, and they charged again. Grant Duff puts Maratha losses at about a third of the force, over 300 killed or disabled.

The accounts disagree on several numbers. Sabhasad and Sarkar say 1,200 of the garrison were killed. Grant Duff says 500 Rajputs, with their commander, were found dead or wounded in the morning, and that hundreds more went over the rock. Sabhasad says gold bracelets, Grant Duff silver. On the date, Sarkar’s 1961 chronology gives 4 February, while his 1920 edition said only “late in January.” Sarkar notes that all his dates are in the Old Style calendar, which ran ten days behind the one in use today.

The Mughal side is thinner. Bhimsen Saksena records that Shivaji took several forts, that many Mughal fort commanders fought bravely, and that news of lost forts reached the Emperor every day. Sarkar uses the passage for the 1670 campaign as a whole, and Bhimsen does not name Kondana in it. Each account has the garrison fighting hard.

A lizard, a wedding and a lion

Three details from the popular retellings differ from what the chronicles say. The first is the ghorpad, a monitor lizard that, in tradition, carried the first rope up the cliff. Rawlinson’s 1915 biography prints a ballad of Sinhagad, translated by C. A. Kincaid, which he describes as one of the popular songs still sung among the Marathas of the Pune district. The ballad names the animal Yeshwant. Rawlinson’s note on it says the story has “no support in contemporary accounts” but is believed all over the Deccan. Gordon, who calls the exploit the subject of one of the most popular Marathi ballads still current, describes rope ladders and no lizard.

Down To Earth reported in August 2024 that Charles Augustus Kincaid retold the ghorpad story in his 1918 History of the Maratha People. The same article cites a 2023 paper by Elora Tribedy, a field archaeologist at Nalanda University, arguing that the animal in Indian art and legend is the Bengal monitor, not the iguana that older English writers called it. A herpetologist and a wildlife photographer quoted there say a monitor wedged in a crevice or burrow can hold a great deal of weight, and the article concludes that Tanaji’s use of the lizard may have been possible.

The second is the wedding. Scroll’s review of the film describes the original tale as one in which Tanaji leaves his son’s wedding to defend the fort. Neither Sabhasad’s passage nor Sarkar’s mentions a wedding.

The third is the lion. The remark attributed to Shivaji in Sabhasad is the one quoted above, about one fort taken and another lost. The lion version appears in a footnote by Sen, citing Grant Duff, and Grant Duff has Shivaji say “The den is taken but the lion is slain.” Sarkar says Shivaji named the fort Singh-garh after the lion-heart that won it. Grant Duff says the name was older. In his account Shivaji had changed or restored the name to Singurh when he first got the fort by a bribe, and the remark plays on a name already in use. Sinhagad is the name the fort carries today.

What came next

Sarkar records that Nilo Pant recovered Purandar on 8 March 1670. Gordon adds that within six months Shivaji’s forces had taken four more forts, Purandar, Rohida, Lohgad and Mahuli, and that in October he sacked Surat for the second time.

Sabhasad says Moro Pant, Nilo Pant, Annaji and the Mavlas took twenty-six more forts in four months. Sarkar calls the claim an exaggeration, notes that four months is merely a vague term, and gives 23 as the number in the Mughal record of the treaty.

The 2020 film

Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior opened on 10 January 2020. Om Raut directed it and co-wrote it with Prakash Kapadia, and the Press Information Bureau lists Ajay Devgn FFilms as producer. Scroll’s photo credit also names T-Series. It is in Hindi, and Scroll notes it was released in 3D. Ajay Devgn plays Tanhaji, Saif Ali Khan plays Udaybhan, Kajol plays Tanhaji’s wife Savitribai and Sharad Kelkar plays Shivaji. Bollywood Hungama reported on 28 January 2020 that the film stood at Rs 304.09 crore gross worldwide, which is that outlet’s figure.

The film is a dramatisation, and its reviewers say where. Priyanka Bhadani of The Week writes that it opens on the Battle of Sinhagad and that Tanhaji leaves his son’s wedding to fight for Kondhana. Nandini Ramnath of Scroll writes that Raut freely adapts the lore and rewrites the fate of some characters. She describes an Udaybhan who kills at will and travels with a female captive, and a final clash in which Tanhaji’s sword faces Udaybhan’s cannon, named Naagin. None of the accounts quoted above mentions a cannon or a captive. Sabhasad and Sarkar both name a Rajput commander for the fort, Udebhan or Udai-bhan, and both have the two commanders fall in single combat.

Ramnath also writes that the film views the 17th century through present-day politics and shows the Mughals as invaders although they had long been settled in the region. She praises the film’s depiction of Maratha guerrilla tactics and its performances, and says it often has the quality of a ballad, heavily embellished.

At the 68th National Film Awards, which covered films of 2020, the jury announced Tanhaji as winner of the award for Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment on 22 July 2022. The Press Information Bureau lists a Swarna Kamal and Rs 2 lakh each for the producer, Ajay Devgn FFilms, and the director, Om Raut. Devgn shared the Best Actor award with Suriya, who won for the Tamil film Soorarai Pottru, and Nachiket Barve and Mahesh Sherla won Best Costume Designer for Tanhaji. President Droupadi Murmu conferred the awards in New Delhi on 30 September 2022.