When Shivaji was seventeen, he decided to transform
what were till then simply games to a reality. He and his friends encouraged by Jijabai and his Guru Dadoji Kondeo; decided to take a formal oath to free the country from
the shackles of Muslim tyranny. This was done in the year 1645 in a dark cavern housing a small temple to the Hindu God Shiva (locally called Raireshwar).
At the cave temple of Raireshwar in the Sayhadris Shivaji and his select
band of teenaged Maratha friends slit their thumbs and poured the blood oozing from it on the Shiva-linga (Phallus representing the Lord Shiva). By
this act they declared a blood-feud against Mughal tyranny. Here Shivaji and his select band of teenaged
Maratha friends slit their thumbs and poured the blood oozing from it on the Shiva-linga (Phallus representing the Lord Shiva). By this act they declared a blood-feud against
Mughal tyranny. This was the beginning of a long and arduous Maratha-Mughal struggle that went on for the next century and a half to culminate in the defeat of the Mughals and
their replacement by the Marathas as the dominant power in India when the British came into the scene. (But more of the British later.)
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