Rajgad Fort: Shivaji’s First Capital, Its Three Machis and the Balekilla

Rajgad Fort is a hill fort in Pune district of Maharashtra, set on a high spur of the Sahyadri about 5 miles east of Torna. Chhatrapati Shivaji fortified the hill, earlier known as Murumbdev, in the late 1640s and governed from it through most of his rise, before Raigad became his capital. The fort is known for that role and for its unusual plan: a central citadel with three long fortified spurs, the machis, running out from it.

The name trips up almost everyone, because Rajgad and Raigad differ by one letter and both served as Shivaji’s capital. Rajgad came first. The move to Raigad is dated anywhere from 1662 to 1674 depending on the source, and even Rajgad’s own start date varies between about 1646 and 1648. This note sets the two forts side by side and gives each date with its source. Then it explains the machi design that made Rajgad so hard to besiege.

Where Rajgad Fort is and what it’s known for

Rajgad is the fort from which Shivaji ran his growing state before Raigad, a hill fort on the Pune side of the Western Ghats with a citadel and three spurs. Jadunath Sarkar, describing Aurangzeb’s siege, calls the whole hill, 24 miles in circuit, a single stronghold, and that size is the first thing to hold on to.

How Shivaji came to hold Rajgad

Shivaji took the nearby fort of Torna around 1646 and then fortified the hill 5 miles to its east, which became Rajgad. Sarkar’s account is the clearest. Torna fell to a trick rather than a fight, its Bijapuri commandant was displaced, and Shivaji found about 2 lakh hun of government treasure there. He renamed Torna Prachandgarh, a name that didn’t last, and on the crest of the same spur he raised Rajgad with three walled redoubts on the lower terraces of the hill.

The sources don’t describe the start in the same way, and it’s worth seeing why:

• Sarkar treats Rajgad as a new fort that Shivaji built.
• Maharashtra Tourism says the fort was originally known as Murumbdev and that Shivaji captured it in 1647.
• The Kolaba gazetteer, writing about Raigad, simply calls Rajgad his former capital.

The accounts fit together if an older post on the hill was taken over and then rebuilt on a far larger scale, but that’s an inference, not something the sources state. The honest verb in an answer is “fortified”, not “built” or “captured”. What isn’t in doubt is the result: by 1648, Sarkar notes, Rajgad and Torna marked the southern edge of the territory of Chhatrapati Shivaji, a chain of hill forts guarding the Pune country.

Bijapur noticed. Sarkar records that these acts of aggression were reported at court and that Shivaji kept the ministers friendly with bribes, which bought him the years he needed to finish the work.

Rajgad as Shivaji’s seat of government

Rajgad was Shivaji’s first seat of government, from the late 1640s until Raigad replaced it, and the family’s life and the state’s business both ran from here. Maharashtra Tourism counts over 26 years, from 1647 to 1674. The Kolaba gazetteer’s sources put the choice of Raigad earlier, in 1662 according to Khafi Khan and in 1672 according to S. V. Avalaskar.

The dated events tell you the fort was lived in, not just held:

• 5 September 1659: Saibai, Shivaji’s first wife and Sambhaji’s mother, died at Rajgad, two months before the encounter with Afzal Khan.
• February 1664: Shivaji returned to Rajgad after the first sack of Surat, and Maharashtra Tourism says the Surat wealth was kept here.
• 5 March 1666: he left his family at Rajgad and set out for Agra with his son Sambhaji.
• 12 September 1666: he was back at Rajgad after the escape from Agra; Sarkar rejects the Jedhe Shakavali’s later date of 20 November.
• 1668 and 1669: English merchants at Karwar report him living quietly at Rajgad.
• 24 February 1670: Rajaram, his younger son, was born at Rajgad.

Put the last three bullets together and the date problem shrinks. Shivaji was still based at Rajgad at the end of the 1660s, so a clean break in 1662 is hard to accept, even if Khafi Khan is right that Raigad was chosen around then. The safe line has two parts: Rajgad was the first seat of government, and Raigad was formally the capital from the coronation of 1674, with the years between as a gradual shift. The note on Raigad Fort covers that later capital and the coronation itself.

The date sources for the family events are worth one sentence each. Sarkar takes Saibai’s death date from the Jedhe Shakavali, a Marathi chronicle of dated events, and gives Rajaram’s birth date in his appendix of Shivaji’s family. The place of both events at Rajgad comes from Maharashtra Tourism’s account of the fort.

Rajgad and the Treaty of Purandar

Under the Treaty of Purandar in 1665, Shivaji handed a large block of forts to the Mughal general Mirza Raja Jai Singh, but Rajgad stayed with him. That treaty is the low point of his early career, and it’s where aspirants most often place Rajgad wrongly.

The number of forts ceded depends on the source. Sarkar speaks of the 23 forts Shivaji had given up in Jai Singh’s time. The older Poona district gazetteer, following Grant Duff, says he gave 20 of his 32 forts, with Purandar and Sinhgad among them. Either way, the heart of the Pune country passed for a time to the Mughal Empire.

The evidence that Rajgad was not part of the surrender is the treaty’s own sequel. When Shivaji left for Aurangzeb’s court at Agra in March 1666, Sarkar records that he left his family at Rajgad, and after the escape it was to Rajgad that he returned. His elder son, later Chhatrapati Sambhaji, traveled with him and came home months later by a separate route. A fort you leave your mother and household in is a fort you still hold.

What happened to Rajgad after Shivaji

Rajgad changed hands three times between 1689 and 1704. The Mughals took it about July 1689, the Marathas won it back in 1690, and Aurangzeb took it again in February 1704 after a siege of more than ten weeks.

The first loss came in the collapse that followed Sambhaji’s capture early in 1689, when fort after fort fell or was bought. Sarkar records that the Mughals put Rajgad under Abul Khair, who had long commanded Junnar, and that when a Maratha force made a show around the hill he lost his nerve and fled. Ramchandra and Shankaraji, the two Maratha leaders running the home territory while Rajaram was at Jinji, recovered Rajgad in 1690, together with Torna and other nearby forts. By 1694 Shankaraji was sending expeditions out from Rajgad and holding a traitor prisoner in its citadel.

The second loss was the work of Aurangzeb himself. From 1699 the old emperor spent six years besieging the great Maratha hill forts one by one, and his army reached Rajgad and opened the siege on 2 December 1703. The fort held until 16 February 1704. Sarkar’s verdict on the whole campaign is the line to remember: apart from Torna, none of these forts was taken by assault, and every one capitulated after a time and for a price.

So Rajgad, like Raigad, never fell to a storming party. Its story as a working stronghold closes with the fall of the Maratha Empire, which the East India Company defeated in 1818.

The machis: how Rajgad is laid out

Rajgad is a citadel with three fortified spurs. A machi is a walled terrace or spur below the summit, a fortified shelf with its own walls and gates, and the Balekilla is the citadel, the highest and last-held part of the fort. Sarkar calls the machis walled redoubts, and a redoubt is exactly that: an enclosed outwork that can fight on its own.

Maharashtra Tourism describes the four parts this way:

• Padmavati Machi: the heart of the fort and the royal residence, with the Padmavati temple, the Padmavati lake and palace ruins.
• Sanjivani Machi: to the west, closed by three layers of fortification, one behind another.
• Suvela Machi: to the east, a narrow ridge with the Nedhe, a natural hole through the rock.
• Balekilla: the highest point, holding the remains of the royal quarters.

Now take the fort the way a besieger would have to. The standard approaches today still follow the spurs: the Gunjavane path climbs to Padmavati Machi, and the steeper Pali path reaches Sanjivani Machi. An army that forced its way onto one machi was not inside the fort. It stood on a narrow ridge with the Balekilla above it and two more machis still manned, each able to fire along the ridge it guarded.

That’s the design idea in one line: Rajgad spreads its defense across three spurs so that an attacker has to divide his force, while a garrison can fall back from shelf to shelf. The cost of that design is size. To blockade it properly, a besieger had to cover a circuit of 24 miles of broken hill, which is why Aurangzeb’s army needed ten weeks and a bargain rather than a single assault.

Compare the two capitals and the contrast teaches itself. Raigad closes one path up a cliff-bound rock and throws its strength into a single gate. Rajgad offers several ridges and defends each of them. A third model, Daulatabad Fort, cut its own cliff and forced every attacker into one dark tunnel. Three forts, three answers to the same problem of making a hill hold.

Rajgad Fort today

Rajgad is a component of a UNESCO World Heritage property. On 11 July 2025, at the 47th session of the World Heritage Committee in Paris, the Maratha Military Landscapes of India were inscribed as India’s 44th World Heritage property, according to the Ministry of Culture. The site’s current-affairs note on the inscription lists all 12 forts, and the UNESCO listing gives the criteria.

In plain words, criterion (iv) recognizes an outstanding example of a type of building or landscape that illustrates a stage in history, here a network of forts built to use the Sahyadri and the coast. Criterion (vi) recognizes a direct link with events or traditions of outstanding significance, and Rajgad’s claim rests on its years as the seat of Shivaji’s government.

Rajgad’s protection differs from its better-known neighbors. It is state protected, one of the four components in the care of Maharashtra’s Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, while Raigad and Shivneri are protected by the Archaeological Survey of India. In a Prelims statement question, that single word “state” is where the trap usually sits. For the wider picture, see the roundup of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in India.

The pressure on the fort today comes from its popularity as much as from age. Maharashtra Tourism promotes overnight camping near the Padmavati temple and three trekking routes up the hill, and that kind of footfall on a ruin spread along long ridges is hard to manage. The listing makes the state’s custodianship more visible, and it also raises the bar for what that custodianship has to deliver.

How to study Rajgad Fort for exams

Rajgad sits in two chapters of the syllabus: the rise of the Maratha state in medieval history, and fort architecture in art and culture, now with a place on India’s heritage list. It’s rarely studied alone. It’s studied against Raigad, so learn it as the first half of a pair.

The fort is best used inside a larger question on the Maratha state. History Optional 2026 Paper I asked: “Trace the trajectory of Maratha polity from Shivaji to Peshwa Balaji Baji Rao. What was the impact of the Third Battle of Panipat (1761) on the Maratha State? Analyze.” Rajgad’s years as the first seat of government are where that trajectory begins.

History Optional 2024 Paper I came closer to the fort itself: “How did the Maratha guerrilla warfare tactics contribute to their military successes against larger and more established armies?” Rajgad belongs in that answer as the other half of guerrilla war: a chain of hill forts gave mobile bands a base to strike from and a rock to fall back on, and its machis let one hill hold Aurangzeb’s own army for ten weeks.

On the Prelims side, 94 of the 1,403 questions from 2013 to 2026 in the site’s Prelims question bank are tagged Art and Culture, the section where fort architecture sits, which is about one question in fifteen.

Revision facts to hold:

• Earlier name Murumbdev; fortified by Shivaji from about 1646 to 1648, 5 miles east of Torna.
• First seat of government; the shift to Raigad is dated 1662 to 1674, and Raigad became the formal capital in 1674.
• Saibai died here in 1659 and Rajaram was born here in 1670.
• Kept by Shivaji after the Treaty of Purandar (1665), under which he gave up 23 forts by Sarkar’s count.
• Taken by the Mughals about July 1689, recovered in 1690, and surrendered to Aurangzeb in February 1704 after a siege from 2 December 1703.
• Plan: Balekilla plus three machis, Padmavati, Suvela and Sanjivani.
• State protected; a component of the Maratha Military Landscapes of India, inscribed 2025.

Three confusions deserve a line each. Raigad is the coronation fort in Raigad district; Rajgad is the earlier capital in Pune district, about 20 miles to the east. Older books spell it Rajgarh, which is also the name of a district in Madhya Pradesh. Sarkar even uses “Rajgarh” for the highest hill of the fort at Jinji, which is Gingee, another component of the same UNESCO property, so read the context before you read the name.

Rajgad is where the Maratha state learned to govern before it learned to call itself a kingdom. If you can place it correctly against Raigad and explain why its machis pushed Aurangzeb into a bargain, you have more on this fort than most answers carry.

Frequently Asked Questions

Practice Questions

Prelims

1. Consider the following statements: 1. Rajgad served as Shivaji’s seat of government before Raigad. 2. Shivaji’s coronation of 1674 took place at Rajgad. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

• (a) 1 only
• (b) 2 only
• (c) Both 1 and 2
• (d) Neither 1 nor 2

Answer: (a) Rajgad was the earlier seat of government; the coronation took place at Raigad.

2. Consider the following statements about Rajgad Fort: 1. It is protected by the Archaeological Survey of India. 2. It is a component of the Maratha Military Landscapes of India. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

• (a) 1 only
• (b) 2 only
• (c) Both 1 and 2
• (d) Neither 1 nor 2

Answer: (b) Rajgad is in the UNESCO serial property but is protected by Maharashtra’s Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, not the ASI.

3. Which of the following are machis (fortified spurs) of Rajgad Fort? 1. Padmavati 2. Suvela 3. Sanjivani 4. Takmak. Select the correct answer using the code given below.

• (a) 1, 2 and 3 only
• (b) 1 and 4 only
• (c) 2, 3 and 4 only
• (d) 1, 2, 3 and 4

Answer: (a) Takmak Tok is a cliff point on Raigad, not a machi of Rajgad.

4. Which one of the following events is associated with Rajgad Fort?

• (a) The coronation of Shivaji
• (b) The birth of Rajaram in 1670
• (c) The birth of Shivaji
• (d) The death of Shivaji in 1680

Answer: (b) Rajaram was born at Rajgad on 24 February 1670; the other events belong to Raigad and Shivneri.

5. Aurangzeb’s siege of Rajgad in 1703-04 ended when:

• (a) the fort was taken by direct assault
• (b) the garrison capitulated after about ten weeks
• (c) the Mughals abandoned the siege in the monsoon
• (d) the fort was blown up by mining

Answer: (b) The siege ran from 2 December 1703 to 16 February 1704 and ended in a surrender on terms.

Mains

1. Explain how the machi layout of Rajgad shaped its defense, and compare it with a single-approach fort such as Raigad. (10 marks, 150 words)
2. “Rajgad was the capital of a rising state; Raigad was the capital of a crowned one.” Discuss. (15 marks, 250 words)
3. Examine the terms of the Treaty of Purandar (1665) and assess their effect on Shivaji’s network of forts. (15 marks, 250 words)
4. Aurangzeb’s campaign against the Maratha hill forts from 1699 is often described as a war of attrition. Evaluate this view with reference to Rajgad and Torna. (15 marks, 250 words)
5. Safeguarding the Indian art heritage is the need of the moment. Discuss. (10 marks, 150 words) Previous year: Mains 2018, GS Paper I.