Even then, the documents from ‘Shivapurvakaal’ or ‘Before Shivaji’ period and ‘Shivakalin’ or ‘During Shivaji’ period are difficult to read as the size of the paper and the writing is very small. “This script is estimated to date back to the 14th century, although the documents that we have are from the 16th century. While some scholars trace the origins of Modi to the Mauryas, others think it was Hemadri Pandit or Hemadpant, a minister of the Yadava dynasty of Devagiri, who may have created the script. “Wherever the Maratha empire stretched, work was done in Modi script,” says Dhume. Most of these papers have not been transliterated. More documents can be found with families and archives in Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Goa and Tamil Nadu, where the Marathas had a presence since the kingdom had expanded into an empire. Joshi has a copy of a book with stories such as the Monkey and the Cap Seller written in the Modi script.
The script was used for war correspondence and secret sociopolitical conversations between Marathas, among other subjects. There are around four crore papers in Modi script in the Pune Archives alone, pertaining to land deals, trade, property, revenue and inam or rewards. Letter of approx 1790 giving revenue rights to one of Mohite ancestors. “The Modi script was created by breaking and twisting the rules of grammar in order to enable scribes and officials to write quickly and make multiple copies of a document,” he says. It is meant for fast writing - you draw a line from left to right before writing without lifting your hand or lifting it very little,” adds Dhume. Modi is a cursive script whose special feature is that grammar is secondary. Writing in Devanagari takes time as each letter is written separately. Copies of the document would be given to all parties concerned. “Before the printing press, all work done in the court had to be recorded on paper. The script continued to be used through the British era and was still taught in schools in post-Independence India before it was phased out in the 1950s. Documents and letters were constantly being exchanged between different corners of the empire and Shaniwar Wada, enabling the modern reader to see not only the history of Maharashtra but also of India,” says Dhume. “All administrative paperwork of the Peshwas, for instance, were carried out in the Modi script. Today, Marathi is written only in Devanagri. Modi was a script used to write Marathi for an estimated 700 years.
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He has an old document in the Modi script that contains a detailed recipe of gulkand, from how to separate the petals to how much sugar is needed to make it fragrant and delicious. “The harvest was so bountiful that almost every farmer in Nasik began to plant Damascus roses and make gulkand and other rose preparations,” he says.
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Shivaji Maharaj’s Modi script letter (Image Courtesy Rajendra Dhume)įrom another part of the city, Mahesh Joshi, a scholar of the Modi script, talks about the Damascus rose, whose saplings were brought to Nasik from Afghanistan and planted on a fertile patch of land. There are crores of documents like it,” says Mohite, who studies the Modi script at Bharat Itihas Sanshodhak Mandal in Pune from Rajendra Dhume, a history scholar and Modi script expert. Hambirrao’s letter tells us how he managed troops and his generals, what motivated him, and his level of confidence. People like Hambirrao are hidden from mainstream historians in the pages written in this script. “If anybody wants to know Maratha history accurately, it is necessary to first understand the Modi script.
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