01From Chondi to Maheshwar
Ahilyabai was born on 31 May 1725 at Chondi, near Jamkhed in the Ahmednagar country, to Mankoji Shinde, the village patil. Malhar Rao Holkar is said to have noticed the girl at a temple and asked for her as a bride for his son Khanderao; they were married in 1733. Khanderao was killed by a cannon ball at the siege of Kumbher in 1754. Ahilyabai meant to become sati, and Malhar Rao begged her not to. She lived, and he trained her in revenue and the army’s accounts. After Malhar Rao died in 1766 and her only son Male Rao the next year, she asked the Peshwa for the government and took it.
02The queen at Maheshwar
She moved her seat to Maheshwar, on the north bank of the Narmada, and ruled from a plain house above the ghats. Tukoji Holkar commanded the army; she kept the treasury and the courts. Every morning she worshipped Shiva and heard petitions, and she held that the wealth of the state was a trust from Shri Shankar; her orders went out with the god’s name on them. Malwa stayed at peace through years of war elsewhere. Sir John Malcolm, who gathered memories of her in Central India a generation later, found her name still blessed in the villages. The weavers she settled at Maheshwar still make the Maheshwari sari.
03Temples raised again
Her name stands on stone across Bharat. At Kashi, where Aurangzeb had the Vishwanath temple pulled down in 1669, she built the present temple beside the Gyanvapi in 1780. At Prabhas Patan she raised a temple for Somnath in 1783 near the ruined old one. She rebuilt the Vishnupad temple at Gaya in 1787 and the Grishneshwar jyotirlinga near Ellora, and gave ghats, dharmashalas, wells and annakshetras at Kedarnath, Badrinath, Dwarka, Rameswaram, Omkareshwar, Trimbakeshwar and many more. She died at Maheshwar on 13 August 1795.
