Person · Maratha Peshwa

Mādhavrāo I Peshwa

Also known as Madhavrao I, Madhav Rao I, Madhavrao Ballal

Date

1745 – 1772

Function

Authority & administration

Tradition

Peshwa daftar; Maratha chronicles

Confidence

Established / referenced

Worth knowing

He spent his last months at Theūr with the Chintāmani, dying of tuberculosis in November 1772; his wife Ramābāī committed sati. The Peshwa endowments across the Aṣṭavināyaka circuit largely date from his reign and his uncle Chimāji Appā's campaigns.

Connections (3)

• PatronageChintamani, Pune

  Mādhavrāo I made Theūr his retreat, rebuilt the Chintāmani's assembly hall, and went there to die in 1772 at twenty-seven; Ramābāī committed sati beside him. Of the eight, this is the one with a Peshwa's personal history in it, which is why it is the most built up. He had taken office at sixteen with the Marathas broken after Panipat and restored their position across northern and southern India before he was thirty.

• PatronageVighnahar, Junnar

  Chimāji Appā gilded Ozar's spire with gold taken at Vasai from the Portuguese in 1739, and his nephew's reign endowed the circuit further. A Konkan siege therefore paid for a roof on the Kukadi, which is as direct a link between Maratha war and Maratha temple building as the record offers.

• Imperial administration ofPune/ Poona

  Pune was the Peshwa capital and Mādhavrāo governed the Maratha confederacy from Shaniwarwada for eleven years, recovering after Panipat what most observers thought lost. The Aṣṭavināyaka shrines lie within a day's ride of that city, which is not a coincidence about their prominence. Grant Duff wrote that the loss of Panipat was less ruinous to the Maratha empire than Mādhavrāo's early death, which is a considerable claim about a man of twenty-seven.

Sources

Wikipedia, “Madhavrao I”. The subject’s own writings where they survive, and the standard biographical literature.

• Wikipedia — Madhavrao I