Place · Maratha hill fort · India
Sinhagad, Pune
Also known as Kondana, Kondana / Sinhagad, Pune, Sinhagad
The hilltop fort at Sinhagad in Pune district, Maharashtra, 30 kilometres from Pune — a 10-century Yadava fortification on the 760-metre Sinhagad hill, originally called Kondhana. The fort was renamed Sinhagad (Lion Fort) after the 1670 assault by Tanaji Malusare, Shivaji's lieutenant, who led 300 Mavala soldiers up the sheer rock face on 4 February 1670 to recapture the fort from the Mughals. Tanaji was killed in the engagement; Shivaji's grief at the news is recorded in the famous dialogue 'Gad ala pan sinh gela' ('The fort has come but the lion has gone'). The fort's Kalyan Darwaza, Pune Darwaza, Tanaji Memorial and the Rajaram chhatri (where Chhatrapati Rajaram, Shivaji's son, died in 1700) preserve the Maratha heritage. ASI protection since 1909. The annual Tanaji Jayanti on 4 February draws thousands of Maratha pilgrims.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 18.366, 73.755
Connections (4)
- Shivaji campaignRaigad
Tanaji Malusare's night assault carried Sinhagad for Shivaji in February 1670, part of the campaign that recovered in four months most of the twenty-three forts surrendered to the Mughals by the Treaty of Purandar five years earlier. Tanaji was killed in the fighting, and the line Shivaji is said to have spoken — the fort is won and the lion is gone — gave the place its name. It is the single most sung episode in the powada repertoire.
- Devotional corpus onPawāḍā
The powada repertoire is effectively a gazetteer of the Maratha hill forts, and Tanaji Malusare's night assault on Sinhagad in 1670 is its single most sung episode. Several of the earliest ballads were composed within a few years of the events, by men who could have spoken to participants. Where a Persian chronicle gives the Mughal account of these campaigns, the powada gives the Marathi one, and the two can be read against each other.
- Site withinPune
Sinhagad, Pune sits inside Pune and forms one piece of its layered sacred, royal or civic landscape. The city carries this entry as one of the sites that make its urban fabric legible — a shrine, monument, institution or craft tradition specifically anchored at this location — and the city's broader history reads better when the stop is seen in its context rather than in isolation. The surrounding streets, markets and other heritage ensembles around it belong to the same single city.
- Site withinPune/ Poona
Sinhagad Fort sits within Pune district, Maharashtra, 30 kilometres from the Pune city centre. The 760-metre hill fort (formerly Kondhana), site of Tanaji Malusare's 4 February 1670 assault that gave the fort its name 'Lion Fort', is historically and administratively part of the Pune district. The fort's position overlooking the Pune valley and its proximity to the Peshwa capital made it central to the Maratha fortification network radiating from Pune.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Sinhagad”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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