Match the following in context of Asht Pradhan system of Maratha rulers :
Official
a. Sachiva
b. Peshwa
c. Samant
d. Amatya
Department
1. Prime Minister
2. Incharge of Correspondence
3. Finance Minist

Question

Match the following in context of Asht Pradhan system of Maratha rulers :
Official
a. Sachiva
b. Peshwa
c. Samant
d. Amatya
Department
1. Prime Minister
2. Incharge of Correspondence
3. Finance Minister
4. Foreign Minister
Choose the correct option :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, a – 2, b – 1, c – 4, d – 3. Shivaji formalised his council of eight ministers, the Ashta Pradhan, at his coronation at Raigad on 6 June 1674, and each of the eight held a named department with a Sanskrit title deliberately chosen to replace the Persian vocabulary of the Deccan sultanates. Take the four in the list one by one. The PESHWA, also called Pantpradhan, was the chief minister for general administration and the first of the eight — Moropant Trimbak Pingle held it — so b matches 1, Prime Minister. The AMATYA, whose older title was Mujumdar, kept the accounts of the state and checked all receipts and expenditure, which is the finance portfolio, so d matches 3. The SUMANT, printed here as Samant and also known as the Dabir, handled relations with other sovereign powers, so c matches 4, Foreign Minister. That leaves the SACHIVA, the Shurunavis, whose specific duty was the royal correspondence — he drafted royal letters and grants and scrutinised their wording before they went out — so a matches 2, Incharge of Correspondence. Assembled, that is a – 2, b – 1, c – 4, d – 3, which is option (a). Two of the pairs, b–1 and d–3, are the ones most candidates already know; the mark is decided by whether you can separate the Sachiva's paperwork from the Sumant's diplomacy, and the safest route is to fix the Sumant on foreign affairs first, because the Sachiva is then the only office left for correspondence.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) The positional trap, and the one the question is built for — it simply pairs the lists in the order they are printed, a with 1, b with 2 and so on. It makes the Sachiva prime minister and demotes the Peshwa to clerk of correspondence, which inverts the best-known fact in Maratha administration. Any candidate who matches by position rather than by portfolio lands here.  (c) A straight scramble: it makes the Sachiva finance minister, the Peshwa foreign minister, the Samant prime minister and the Amatya the correspondence officer. Every one of the four is wrong, and the giveaway is the same as before — the Peshwa is not in the prime-minister slot.  (d) Cannot be right here on logic alone, and this is worth seeing clearly because BPSC uses this fourth option twenty times on this paper. Options (a), (b) and (c) are three different one-to-one pairings of the same four officials with the same four departments. Only one arrangement can be the true one, so two of them cannot be simultaneously correct — the option is structurally unavailable, whatever you know about the Marathas.

Concept: The Ashta Pradhan — literally 'the eight ministers' — is the administrative core of the Maratha state Shivaji built out of territory taken from Bijapur and contested with the Mughals. Its significance is that it turned a war band into a government: eight fixed offices with named departments, Sanskrit titles displacing Persian ones, and, with the exception of the Nyayadhish and the Panditrao, ministers who also held field commands while deputies ran their departments. The eight, with their alternative titles, are the Peshwa or Pantpradhan (general administration), the Amatya or Mujumdar (finance and accounts), the Sachiv or Shurunavis (royal correspondence), the Mantri or Waqia-navis (the king's daily record and intelligence), the Senapati or Sar-i-Naubat (commander-in-chief), the Sumant or Dabir (foreign affairs), the Nyayadhish (chief justice) and the Panditrao (religious endowments and learning). None of the offices was hereditary under Shivaji. The council did not survive as a working cabinet — Sambhaji curtailed it, and after 1714 the Peshwa's office became hereditary in one Chitpavan family at Pune, leaving the other seven as titles.

State PCS 2024 Q75 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q75 — History PYQ with Answer